Green and Blue
by Lord Purple Heart
Summary: A series of oneshots set behind the scenes of the canon timeline of Assassination Classroom.
1. Strawberry Milk

**Strawberry Milk**

The moon was full tonight, its pale rays lighting up the scenery serenely. Nagisa felt a pang of drowsiness hit him as he absorbed the majesty of the scenery, made worse by the fact that he'd just gotten out of the bath. The very gentle wind swept past his cheek, caressing his chin lovingly and gently like a caring mother would.

Or rather, the moon was as full as it could be considering more than half of it had been blown to high heaven by a certain perverted yellow superbeing.

It certainly was a very beautiful night for Class E to spend the evening. The hot spring they'd reserved was just right, and it was so relaxing Nagisa could swear that he could just set up a room for life and live there for the rest of his days if he were so allowed.

Koro-Sensei, however, had managed to rile everyone up and ruin the relaxed mood earlier that night when he'd aggravated everyone into trying to kill him.

Again.

 _What a pain._ Nagisa thought to himself with a begrudging smile as he looked down from the moon, his sights sweeping around the rest of the scene. The dark green grass, bathed by the light blue moonlight, was surrounded by tendrils of shadow that reminded Nagisa a little too much of tentacles.

"What are you thinking about, Nagisa?" The middle-school boy turned to his left, where his friend was giving him a curious look and a small smile.

"Nothing much." He said to Kayano in reply, and he shook his head. "By the way, why were you guys going to kill Koro-Sensei?"

"Ah. You see…" Kayano raised her finger as she told the story, wagging it to and fro whilst she spoke. "He was intruding in our little girls' talk with Miss Bitch. Rude, isn't he?"

"I know what you mean." Nagisa replied, letting out a little laugh. "He was doing the same thing with us, mostly."

"Really?" Kayano took a sip from the canned coffee in her hand. She let out a great loud breath after she gulped down half of the still-steaming contents. "I'll be sure to try and kill him later for eavesdropping!"

"Hehe." Nagisa smiled again and returned his gaze to the moon, idly admiring its gorgeous light.

"…why would you guys talk about something that Koro-Sensei shouldn't know about?"

The sudden question made Nagisa freeze, and he realized that he was being led into a trap. _Not good. I can't tell her that we were having popularity polls about the girls! She'll tell everyone, and then the guys will all get killed!_

Getting killed wasn't a joke anymore to anyone in the class. Everyone took it seriously.

So Nagisa knew that when he used the word, its meaning was quite literal.

The guys would all get killed.

"N-nothing much." Nagisa shrugged, trying his best to hide the nervousness and unease in his voice. "Just talking about guy stuff."

"If you were talking about guy stuff, then it wouldn't be a problem if Koro-Sensei heard you." Nagisa gulped when he saw Kayano's eyes glint mischievously. "Maybe…"

Nagisa shook his head vigorously, but he was beginning to panic on the inside. "Seriously, we weren't talking about anything impor-!"

"If you defend it that much, I'm only going to get more and more curious." Kayano's smile twisted into one of pure wickedness. "What were you talking about, Nagisa?"

"Uh…" Lost for words, Nagisa took a step away from Kayano out of pure reflex.

And in response to that reflex, Kayano grabbed him by the sleeve of his kimono.

 _Crap, she sealed off my escape! I can't run!_

"I'm not gonna let you get away~" Her voice was nothing but playful now, and she neared him with a teasing grin on her lips. "C'mon, spill the beans!"

"N-no!" Nagisa refused stubbornly, trying to break Kayano's grip on his sleeve. "Besides, it's not like you can tell me what you girls were talking about, right?" He reasoned, trying to find a gap in conversation that he could take advantage of.

"Sure, I can." Kayano replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "We were just talking about love experience and which boys in the class were datable."

 _She gave it away without a second thought!_

"Wh-why are you telling me this?!" Nagisa asked, taken completely off guard with surprise.

"Well, you're you." Kayano replied. "I trust you. You're not sleazy, and you're nice. You're my friend too, so I trust you. Besides, it's not that big of a deal as long as you don't tell anyone else, right?"

Nagisa stared at Kayano briefly, at a loss for words at the sudden torrent of honesty.

"…fine, I'll tell you." Nagisa replied, finally managing to brush her hand off of his sleeve. "But don't tell anyone else, got it?"

"Yes, sir!" Kayano saluted him, and the two laughed before they walked away from the window and sat on one of the wooden benches nearby. They leaned their backs onto the wooden wall, the scent of the drinks in their hands making them smile inadvertently as both guy and girl took a sip out of their respective drinks before deciding to continue the conversation.

"…we were talking about a popularity poll." Nagisa admitted, looking away. He had absolutely no idea how to say it to her face. He was pretty sure that doing what they'd done was stupid and shallow. "We talked about…which girls we were interested in."

"I see." Kayano, taking it to the face without any violent reaction whatsoever, nodded with her gaze still intent on Nagisa. "So? What were the results?"

"Huh?!" Nagisa was taken aback again, this time so much that he almost fell off of the bench. He gripped the can in his hand so hard that, by accident, he'd crumpled the aluminum and squeezed some of the content out of the hole on the top and onto his hand. He tried his best to recover, and he regained his composure after he'd regained his balance on the bench. "Wh-wh-why do you-?!"

"I'm asking 'cuz I wanna know."

"I can't just-"

"Fine, fine. I guess it's unfair if you just tell me." Kayano sighed, and she finished her coffee and crushed the can in her hand. She tossed it high up without looking anywhere, and the small can sailed straight into the trash can next to the vending machine. "Then, let's make a trade."

"…trade?" Nagisa echoed, dreading the fact that he already had an idea of what Kayano was about to suggest.

"Sure. I'll tell you what datable guys we thought of, and you tell me the most popular girls."

 _I knew she was gonna say that!_ Nagisa thought to himself despairingly.

And yet, despite the dread that he felt, Nagisa felt the compulsion to say it building up in his chest. "…fine, that's fair."

"Okay, then I go first." Kayano began, grinning. "Maehara and Isogai were at the top. Karma was also up there too."

"Really? Well, I guess that's to be expected." Nagisa looked surprised for a bit, then he just shrugged.

"So? Now that I coughed up my end of the bargain, it's time for you to do the same!" Kayano pointed a finger at the blue-haired boy, and her grin turned near-malicious with how mischievous it was. She knew he was getting cornered, and she had every intention of making sure he was driven right into the center of that corner like a caged rat. "Now, make with the goods!"

Nagisa sighed deeply, slumping forward a bit before shrugging in defeat and looking at Kayano. "Fine, fair enough." He looked down at his hands, counting with his fingers as he spoke. "We had a vote. Kanzaki got the highest with four votes."

"Yeah, she's real pretty! Like some idol!" Kayano gushed, placing her hands together and grinning like a fool. "I wish I had some of her bombastic looks~" Kayano then immediately turned to Nagisa again. "So, who else had votes?"

"Um…Yada had three votes, and Kurahashi had two votes." Nagisa recalled the piece of paper that they'd all had agreed to write the votes on. "Um…who else…?"

"Hey, what about me?"

Nagisa had to do a double take with both his eyes and his head in order to let what Kayano had said fully process in his brain. "…uh…"

"Tell me what I got, Nagisa~" Kayano begged, leaning forward and looking Nagisa in the eyes. "Please~?"

"Okay, okay, you got two votes." Nagisa, unable to resist, surrendered the information. "I told you, so stop looking at me like that!"

"Hahaha, alright, alright~" Kayano grinned, satisfied. She peered at Nagisa, and her smile faded a little bit. "Why don't you want me looking at you like that?"

"Th-that's…" If he could be driven into a corner even more than he already had been, he'd have been nailed to the spot. Nagisa felt so taken aback that he had absolutely no idea how to answer or even if he should answer.

 _I-if I tell her…_ The very prospect of letting the thought slip made his head fuzzy and intelligible. He felt heat rising a little bit in his cheeks, and his heartbeat had already sped up.

"…why are you looking at me like that?" Kayano asked again, inching towards Nagisa and closing the distance. She didn't like the way that Nagisa was looking at her with that kind of hesitation and apprehension in his eyes.

As if she were the reason he was put at such unease.

"I-I…I can't…" Nagisa, stuttering in his panic and unable to recuperate and gather his thoughts with Kayano slowly closing in on him, tried his best to inch away from her. He felt his chest pounding like Mike Tyson was sparring with him as the dummy.

"Why not?" Kayano, already having lost her playful, peppy air to one of curiosity and restlessness, implored of him yet another time.

"I…" His tongue felt so tied up and twisted that he felt like his brain had been smeared in honey and beaten repeatedly with a meat mallet.

"…fine, you don't have to tell me." Kayano gave up so abruptly it left Nagisa bereft of words, and he just sat there stupefied as Kayano stood up and walked towards the vending machine. She tossed in a few coins, pressed a few buttons and then pulled out a tetra pack of strawberry milk. She walked back to the bench with the usual carefree smile on her face and poked the plastic straw into the cardboard.

She sat back down onto the bench and sipped away at the milk in her hands while her companion was left to his thoughts and devices.

 _Alright…take a deep breath and calm down, me…_ Nagisa thought to himself as he tried to gather himself back together and get back under control. _…what just happened?_

To him, it seemed as if Kayano had gone from happy-go-lucky to telenovela maiden with the press of an invisible button.

And he'd been turned into a pile of jelly after a few seconds of exposure. His thoughts had run dry and shriveled up, and his heart had taken off at the speed of Road Runner.

And yet…

And yet he felt something within him as the image and the sensations of those few moments that had happened mere seconds ago reminded him of what he'd felt at the time.

A sense of eagerness. Excitement.

Satisfaction?

And when she'd flicked the switch off…some sort of disappointment?

"…I'm gonna head back into my room, Kayano." Nagisa said, standing up. He turned to face her again, smiling as he waved his hand once. "Night."

"Oh, wait." The green-haired girl stood up as well, and she held out the carton in her hand. Nagisa glanced at it, mystified, as Kayano flashed a grin. "Try this! They saw strawberry milk is great after a bath, and the people don't lie!"

"…sure." Nagisa reached out and took the carton from her hand, and he bit down on the straw and took a sip from the drink. True to Kayano's word, the fruity dairy product's sweetness sent pleasant shivers down Nagisa's body. He let out a slight sigh of contentment. "Hey, you're right! This does-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Kayano immediately swiped the box out of his hands and bit down onto the straw. "Right?"

He felt a minor heat wave strike his face when he saw Kayano's mouth bite down on the straw he had just drank from, and he shook his head to clear his mind. _What are you doing, getting flustered over a little straw?!_

He turned around and walked back down the hallway, and he waved back at Kayano as he did. "Thanks, Kayano. See you tomorrow."

"Sure thing!" She replied energetically, waving her hand goodbye before she turned around and began to walk away.

And as she did, Nagisa felt a wave of impulse hit him in the chest. Like something was giving him a push.

"…I voted for you."

Kayano stopped right where she was standing at those words. But when she turned around, he'd already walked past the corner.

"…you cheater." She muttered, a very slight blush on her cheeks and a very faint smile on her lips as she turned back and walked back to her room. "I was supposed to be the one teasing you. Not the other way around."

* * *

 _By the way, I forgot to mention. If you guys like this chapter, be sure to tell me in the reviews if you want more oneshots of Nagisa x Kayano. I'll be adding them in here as other chapters._


	2. The Suspension Bridge Effect

**The Suspension Bridge Effect**

"Test of courage…part two?" Nagisa repeated, turning around to see Maehara and Okajima grinning mischievously. "What are you talking about?"

"Exactly what it sounds like, Nagisa." Karma replied with his usual laidback smile, taking a sip from his canned coffee and leaning on the wall. "Remember the cave that Koro-Sensei was using? We took another look at it, and we found a deeper network of tunnels inside that are perfect for a test of courage."

"Koro-Sensei's right about one thing alone, and that's the fact that tests of courage are a part of summer!" Maehara replied, clearly unable to hide his excitement. He rubbed his hands together in eagerness, imagining it all happening in his head. "We gotta make it happen, and we're gonna get everyone in on this!"

"We got some of the other guys, like Ryuunosuke and Takebayashi, to help us search for the best entrance." Okajima was clearly ready to jump with energy, since he was practically shivering in place. "Come on, Nagisa! We just need one guy to help spread the word! If we get enough people, we can make this happen!"

"I dunno…" Nagisa wondered, glancing back at everyone. "The last one didn't do go so well, did it? Besides, have you even seen the inside of the tunnel?"

"Aw, come on! Don't poop on the party!" Okajima groaned in complaint. "The fear and thrill lie in the unknown!"

After Koro-Sensei had arbitrarily tried to set everyone up in couples for a test of courage, which had ended in failure, and everyone had pitched in to help Miss Irina/Professor Bitch with her romance, the students had all decided to just relax for the last night. Tomorrow, Class E would be headed back from home from this extremely tiring Assassination Vacation.

And in the boys' room, a plan was clearly being concocted. Noisily, too.

"We've already planned to tell the girls, but we didn't yet." Sugino's voice came from seemingly nowhere, and Nagisa looked to the right and saw him coming out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. He stopped drying his hair and lowered his arms, and he looked right at Nagisa. "We kinda need you to do this one for us."

"…why do I have to be the one to do it?" Nagisa asked in response. "Couldn't Isogai or…I dunno, anyone could ask them, right? Why does it have to be me?"

Okajima put his hands to his chin and then "…actually, I remember Karma just saying it would be fun to send you over there. He said there were a few boob traps they laid in case a guy was gonna sneak over there. A lot of them are for Koro-Sensei, though."

Nagisa shot Karma a look, but the redhead just winked wickedly and grinned, sticking his tongue out teasingly. "He wasn't supposed to tell you that, you know." The delinquent-like student then strode over to Nagisa and then pulled him up to his feet. Karma pushed him in the direction of the door, and then shut it behind Nagisa once the blue-haired boy had staggered outside. "Anyway, we're leaving it to you. Tell everyone to meet us at the beach at nine. We'll just play Old Maid and Go Fish while we wait. Bring us results~"

"Wait a min-" Nagisa turned around in the nick of time just to hear the door lock with a click.

"…jeez…" Nagisa groaned to himself, fiddled with the locked doorknob for a bit and then gave up. He threw his hands up in resignation and then sighed, and then started walking in the direction where he knew the girls were staying.

They were staying in the hotel rooms provided for them by the Kunugigaoka School Summer Trip. It was clearly as extravagant as expected, since it was similar to the hotel they had to infiltrate on the same island. The hallway was lit with a soothing, yellow light and had a long crimson carpet going down the length of the floor. The walls were eggshell white, and had a few lights mounted on the wall in the style of candles, making the place look more ornate than it actually should have looked from the outside.

Nagisa crossed the hallway intersection to the elevators and walked from the East Wing over to the West Wing where the girls' room was.

 _Now that I think about it, Okajima was complaining about our room setup._ Nagisa remembered, smiling wryly to himself as he recalled the semi-bald classmate of his.

The instant he took a step in the hallway that led to the East Wing, Nagisa felt a shiver ride up his spine. He froze in response, and then he took a step backwards.

Piano wire hung at neck height.

 _Crap._ Nagisa thought to himself with begrudging respect and took a closer look at it. He was familiar with the sheen on the lethal string that was the glint of melted and reused anti-Sensei material. _The girls are really prepared._

He glanced at it hesitantly before he sighed, and he ducked under the wire before proceeding down the hallway.

Like a bowstring snapping, he felt his leg suddenly pull and break a string that was positioned at the height of his shin. A sense of foreboding immediately woke him up, and Nagisa felt his instincts dictate that he roll forward.

Roll forward he did, and just in time to evade a barrage of turrets that spewed anti-Sensei BBs. He looked up to see around eight machine gun turrets that had emerged from the wall and point themselves at him.

"Oh, sorry, Nagisa." The familiar voice of Ritsu called out to him from his pocket. He fished his phone out of his pocket and looked down at it to see her smiling apologetically at him. She clapped both hands together and bowed, her head facing the ground. "I was on standby in case Koro-Sensei came over here to peep."

"…you guys really went overkill." Nagisa couldn't help but admire the amount of effort that seemed to have gone into preparing the traps, and he watched as the guns retreated into the wall as if they were never there in the first place.

"Megu and Kurahashi said that this was the basics of the necessities when our potential target is Koro-Sensei." Ritsu replied, shrugging. "So? Is there something you would like to do over in the girls' room?"

 _Somehow, I feel like that wasn't phrased correctly._ Nagisa kept his thoughts to himself. "I was planning to tell them about something the guys were planning later. Is it alright if I go there?"

"No problems!" Ritsu replied, nodding in confirmation and gesturing in the direction of the hallway. "I'll just tell one of them that you'll be coming."

"Thanks." Nagisa nodded, and he placed his phone back into his pocket before proceeding. As he continued down the long hall, he ducked and crawled under piano wires that were elaborately set up like a net as well as evading other traps as per Ritsu's careful instructions.

And after what seemed like hours of getting past those, Nagisa had gone around the corner and made it in front of the girls' room.

"…finally…" Nagisa let out a sigh of relief, pushing himself off of his knees and standing back up. After gathering his senses and getting himself together, Nagisa raised his hand and glanced to the right of the door. He pressed the doorbell and then took a step back, waiting patiently.

"…just a minute!" "Oh, perfect!" A mess of feminine voices penetrated through the wood and reached Nagisa's ears. Immediately, a sense of dread filled his body and he felt the urge to run away scream at him from within his body. His legs tensed in preparation to bolt without his prompting, and sweat already started coursing down his face like he'd been thrown into a boiler.

The door opened quickly, and the first thing Nagisa could see was a wicked grin on Nakamura's face with a bunch of other girls' faces peeking out from behind her. Specifically, Meg, Hara, Kurahashi and Yada. "Just the man-girl we needed, and right on time!" She said approvingly, gesturing for him to enter. "Come on in, we were just about to go get you!"

Those words, however, only made Nagisa feel all the more hesitant. He took a hesitant step forward, and then stopped. "Uh…why do you-"

"C'mon, c'mon!" Yada, grinning, grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him into the room without letting him say another word. With that, the girls parted and made way for Nagisa who was dragged into the room. Nakamura then closed the door behind him and then locked it.

… _I'm getting a really bad feeling about this…_ Nagisa thought as Yada continued to pull him forward, and he was tugged into the room where all of the beds were.

The entire room was very plain and hotel-like. The sheets were all white and the pillows were all the same, with some people sitting or lying down on their beds. There was a single, extremely large television at the back end of the room, and there was a hallway to the right of the room as well. It was a massive shared bedroom, where everyone stayed.

"Why are you dragging me in here?" Nagisa asked as he tugged his arm away from Yada, stopping and trying to reassert his control over the situation.

A difficult thing to do for someone who was surrounded on all sides by girls.

"Why did you bring him inside?" Hayami asked, looking up from the book in her hands. She shot a glance in the direction of the hall on the right, and then looked at Nakamura. She looked worried, both for them and for whoever was in the bathroom. "There are still people in the bath."

A look of total regret immediately transformed Nakamura's features, and she immediately turned to Nagisa. "Crap! Nagisa, quick! Come with-"

She froze completely, even her lips stopped moving, at the sound of a door swiveling open. A familiar, feminine voice was humming a pleasant tune happily to herself as someone exited the bathroom door and walked into the main bedroom.

"Hey, thanks for lending me your towel, Kayano." Hinata was the first to emerge from the bathroom amidst a cloud of steam. Her skin was pinkish from the heat of the bath, and she was smiling apologetically while clad in nothing but a towel over her chest that only reached a little bit below her hips. She skipped over to what seemed to be her bed, completely ignorant of the crowd of girls that was huddled around a completely exposed, stunned Nagisa.

"And thank you, Kanzaki, for lending me yours. I got careless and forgot mine outside." Fuwa had the same apparel and apologetic smile as she walked into the main bedroom and walking over to her bed.

However, she did not ignore the crowd of girls that was clearly the elephant in the room. And seeing Nagisa, she completely froze with her mouth hanging wide open.

Slowly, but surely, the pink flush that was present on her exposed skin invaded her entire face. She let out a yelp of embarrassment and quickly turned around, running behind her bed and crouching under it and hiding herself from view.

"Is something wrong, Fuwa?" Kayano's voice came into the room, but everyone went pale as she walked into the room alongside her final companion, Kanzaki.

Nagisa would have paled, but he'd gone red up to the tips of his ears. Steam could have erupted from the top of his head and it wouldn't look out of place with the intensity of his blush.

"K-K-Kayano!" Nakamura squealed, completely unprepared for this situation, held up her hands as if in self-defense or anticipating it. "Wh-why aren't you wearing a towel?! You too, Kanzaki!"

"Well, Fuwa and Hinata forgot to bring their towels into the bathroom, so we gave them ours." Kanzaki said, a little embarrassed with a light blush to match, as she covered her important parts. "Besides, you have no right to say that when you were parading around in your underwear and saying we should have some female skinship."

"B-be that as it may, be quick and put something on!" Hara quickly jumped in, waving her hands. "Even a bedsheet will be fine!"

"Is something going on, you guys?" Kayano asked, coming out from behind the still-naked Kanzaki and taking strides towards the group of girls. She, like Kanzaki, had lent her towel and was thus nude. "Why are you…all…?"

Mid-stride, Kayano caught sight of Nagisa in the corner of her field of vision. Time froze for the two of them as they locked eyes, almost as if Father Time had chosen that moment to mess with the world and the people living in it.

"…N-Nagisa…?" Off guard and taken completely by surprise, Kayano stayed rooted to the spot. She'd frozen completely, her hands not even making a movement to cover herself.

"…" He knew no words to say in this situation, and his frazzled up tongue knew no way to let any leave his mouth anyway.

"G-G-GET OUT!" With that scream that was a mix of embarrassment and squeamishness, Kayano burst. She turned around and ran to the closest bed, grabbed the pillows and then began hurling them at him with enough force to take off a head.

"Stop! Stop! I get it, so don't throw those at me!" Nagisa begged as he dodged a barrage of soft bullets, rolled to evade another pillow and then dove out of the door, slamming it shut with his foot.

Kayano didn't calm down one bit after that, turning her attention to Nakamura and the others. She took a pillow in both hands and cocked her arms. "What…was he…doing here?" She was breathing heavily, like a beast on the rage.

"We just…wanted to dress him up in girls' clothes and…see how cute he'd look…" Nakamura replied timidly, cowering in fear.

"Wait, why did he come here in the first place?" Megu wondered, and then pulled out her phone. "Ritsu, why was he…?"

The purple-haired avatar displayed herself on the screen on cue. "He came to deliver a message, it seems. He'd gone through the traps for Koro-Sensei that we set to do so."

" **Don't try and change the subject."**

The girls took a step back from the green-haired teenage girl as Kayano stepped forward, ready to pulverize them one by one.

"Now, now." Kanzaki leaped in between Kayano and Nakamura, holding her hands out. "Let's try and calm down, and then see why he came here! Okay?"

"…if you're okay with that, even though he saw you naked, then I guess…"

"It's okay, so please don't bring that up."

"Oh, Professor Karasuma."

Everyone waved their hand in uniform, joint greeting as the P.E teacher of Class E opened the door to the boys' room.

"Hello." The man greeted in reply as he closed the door behind him and walked into the main bedroom. He looked to the side, where he saw Karma sitting on his bed and facing away from him, watching what appeared to be a video on his phone.

As the instructor walked past him, he took a curious glance at the screen for no particular reason. To his surprise, he caught a glimpse of Nagisa on the screen.

"Karma, what are you watching?"

"Real-life footage." The redhead replied, and his signature devilish grin of mischief forced Karasuma to face two choices.

To investigate and ask, or to leave it alone.

He very much desired the latter option, but chose the former for the obligation of a teacher.

"Real-life footage?" Karasuma asked hesitantly, drawing closer. He took a seat onto the bed and shifted closer to Karma. "Of what?"

"The girls' room."

His calm response to something so serious made the entire room react.

"You had something like that?!" Okajima leaped to his feet, hope glimmering in his eyes as he began to race over to Karma's side of the room. "Lemme-urk!"

Isogai held out his arm, and Okajima ran into it facefirst and flopped onto the floor, out for the count. The Class Representative eyed Karma like one would eye a snake: cautiously and hesitantly. "Why are you…?"

Karma just grinned and showed him and Karasuma the screen, which was of Nagisa on the floor outside of the room and breathing heavily as if he'd just seen a devil. "Blackmail material." The redhead snickered maliciously, and the teacher stood back up and took a few steps away from him.

 _Even as an instructor, I must never make Karma mad._

That was what Karasuma honestly thought.

"So you came here to tell us about the test of courage that the boys planned for later?"

Kayano stood with her arms crossed in front of Nagisa, who was kneeling to her for fear of his life in the middle of the hallway.

"Yes." He answered promptly and firmly like he would have answered an army drill sergeant. "I had no ill intent, so please forgive me for my actions."

"Isn't this enough, Kayano?" Kanzaki, who was standing directly behind the green-haired girl, asked as she cast a glance of concern at the boy who was groveling in the hall. "He didn't do it on purpose. Can't you just let him off with this? You two are friends, after all."

"Friend or not, he saw everything! I can't get married anymore! My mom always told me a maiden can't just show skin to just anyone!" Kayano replied, pointing accusingly at him. "He has to take responsibility or I'm not gonna forgive him!"

"Then…how should I take responsibility?"

The question that was asked so honestly and sincerely made all of the girls' heads turn, and they all stared at Nagisa in shock.

His eyes, and his expression both told them all the same thing: he was serious.

Kayano, shaken by the suddenness of the question, took a step back. All kinds of thoughts raced through her head thanks to the turn in conversation, and so many ideas were gushing forth that it was overwhelming.

The most prominent thing that came to mind, however, made Kayano's heart skip a beat and her face redden so quickly it was as if someone had splashed a bucket of red paint onto her face.

 _Why is that the first thing that came to mind?!_ Kayano screamed internally at the mental images of Nagisa in a tuxedo and herself in a white wedding dress. _Just because he saw me like that…it doesn't mean he has to marry me to take responsibility!_

"N-never mind!" Kayano pushed all of the girls back inside the room and slammed it shut, leaving Nagisa outside. "Tell the guys we'll meet them at the beach at nine!"

And all was quiet.

"…hahhh…" Nagisa let out a sigh and began trudging back to the guys' room. "I really do **not** want have to get past all of these traps again…Ritsu, can you call Koro-Sensei here? I want him to trigger all the traps so that I wkn't have trouble on the way back."

"Okay~ Also, you're surprisingly cruel, Nagisa."

"Just call him, Ritsu."

 **At Nine o' Clock…**

The entire Class E, as per the guys' instructions, had all gathered at the entrance to the cave that Koro-Sensei had used for their previous test of courage.

"So?" Nakamura asked, clearly impatient and already disappointed by what she saw. "You call us out for a test of courage and we get this? Come on, you should do better, boys."

"Oh, relax, the actual entrance is inside the cave." Karma replied, knocking his fist on the wall of the cave. "Besides, I'm the only one who probably shouldn't go in."

"What, why?" Nakamura leered at him with a suspecting gaze, her hands on her hips as she leaned forward. "I thought everyone was going in. Don't tell me you're getting cold feet now, scaredy cat."

"Actually, I went ahead and set up a few things inside."

Those words were accompanied by Karma's signature smirk, and everybody felt an ominous chill go down their spines at the thought of Karma placing traps and surprises in the cave.

The fear factor of the cave had gone from 6 over 10 to 30 over 20.

"Y-yeah, then I guess you can't come inside with us." Nakamura agreed, her tone a little more nervous as she decided to divert her attention to the girls behind her. "Anyway, it's customary to go in pairs or groups. Let's decide those."

"Okay."

 **One round of drawing lots later…**

"So it's exactly how things turned out last time…" Sugino muttered, half excited as he stood restlessly next to Kanzaki. "Are you sure that the octopus isn't messing with our stuff? He could just zip in at Mach Speed and change the pairing before we notice."

"Nah, he couldn't have." Nagisa replied, looking down at the slips in everyone's hands with their partner's names written crudely on them. "He was so startled with the traps in the girls' wing that he decided to bother Professor Karasuma and Miss Irina instead of us."

Nagisa shot a worried glance at his partner, who kept herself occupied by staring at everything else except for him. _I can't believe I got Kayano after everything that happened earlier…_

"Alright, then who'll go first?" Karma asked as he gestured to the open mouth of the cave entrance. "I guarantee you a good time."

Everyone shifted, clearly uncomfortable with the idea that Karma had set up the cave. No one spoke or raised their hands and instead shot uneasy looks at each other as if waiting for someone to throw themselves to the piranhas.

After a short while of gazing at the crowd, Karma just sighed and walked over to Nagisa. He whispered in the blue-haired boy's ear, "If you don't volunteer within the next ten seconds, then I'll show everyone the video of you in the girls' room."

 _You took a…!_ Nagisa gritted his teeth, biting back his tongue as he slowly raised his hand to everyone's surprise. "…I'll go!"

"Nagisa, what are you-?" Karma walked over to Kayano and whispered in her ear as well, and she immediately shut up and reddened. Without another word, she averted her eyes to the ground and then raised her hand up.

"That makes two~" Karma hummed, grinning from ear to ear. "Alright, just go in the cave and follow the original path."

"How are we going to find the new path?" Nagisa asked. He didn't know where to go, and Karma or anyone else hadn't told anyone what to do or how to do any of it yet.

"Oh, that won't be a problem." Karma replied, and he smacked Nagisa on the back so hard he stumbled towards the entrance of the cave. He then pushed Kayano gently on her back in the same direction, delivering a smile that looked so full of malice and mischief that it would send Satan packing. "You'll know where to go."

* * *

… _this is awkward._

Nagisa felt the air was palpable as he and Kayano walked side-by-side through the darkness of the cave. The light that allowed him to see anything came from several very dim lamps and flashlights mounted on the wall. Their brightness had been dialed down, making it hard to view anything beyond a good three meters.

In each of their hands was a very small and not very powerful flashlight that could only light the rocky, dark rock floor with a somewhat weak beam of electronic light that was not just weak, but narrow.

Going in at nine 'o clock in the wee hours only made things worse for their eyesight. With sleepiness as well as tension hanging in the air for both him and Kayano, it was incredibly difficult for Nagisa to focus on what he was supposed to come here for.

Which was, namely, getting scared out of his wits by whatever Karma had chosen to _prepare_.

But that was the last thing on his mind.

Right now, Nagisa and Kayano strode forward in the darkness silently with so much tension in between them it was palpable.

… _she's definitely still mad, isn't she?_ He thought to himself, trying to grasp the expression on her face.

Kayano wasn't looking at him, though. She faced forward, as if he weren't there in the first place.

 _Yeah, she's definitely still mad._ He thought, his heart sinking in his chest. _At this rate, I won't get to apologize properly. What can I do to make her forgive me completely…?_

However, Kayano's mind was in a complete mess and a stark contrast from what Nagisa made it out to be. Instead of spending the time remaining mad at him, Kayano had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do.

 _Ugh, I can't believe I got the same pairing as last time!_ She thought to herself, holding back the urge to squeeze the life out of something. _Is God trying to punish me or something?! How the heck am I supposed to talk to him normally after all that?!_

She felt like smashing her fist into the wall, but doing so would have created problems both for Nagisa, herself and everyone else that was waiting outside. _God, why won't my heart calm down?! It's practically trying to turn itself into a milkshake!_

"…come to think of it, how are we supposed to know where the deeper caves are?" Nagisa voiced a very important question that had his company stumped. "He said that we'd know when we got there, but-"

Suddenly, as Kayano took a step forward, she heard the sound of liquid beneath her feet. A splash, like she'd stepped in a puddle of moderate size. And at the same, a sudden smell hit her nostrils like a wave.

"KYAAAAAAAAAA!" She let out a cry of terror and jumped back, looking to grab onto whatever she could find and shield her. Her arm latched onto Nagisa's, and she quickly used his body as her cover.

She knew that smell. And so did Nagisa, as the scent reached him too and made his nerves suddenly explode with shock.

Blood.

The lights had already gotten dimmer this far into the cavern, leaving them almost unable to see directly in front of them. Nagisa fumbled for his flashlight, and then managed to flick it on and point it at the ground in front of the two of them.

It was an arrow of what looked like fresh, crimson blood that pointed to a fork in the cavern previously hidden in the shadows that revealed itself when Nagisa pointed his flashlight upward.

"…without a doubt, this is Karma's doing…" Nagisa gulped down his saliva nervously, not daring to tread another step as he reassessed just how scary the situation was. His heartbeat was definitely so high that it bordered on medically unhealthy, and beads of sweat were already dripping from his chin.

In a single instant, the atmosphere of the whole cave had changed from silent and tense to enclosing and terrifying. The shadows felt longer, the air felt colder and the silence felt louder.

"…K-Kayano?" Nagisa realized that his arm was beginning to hurt more than his heart did in his chest, and he turned to face her. He was getting worried. "Uh, are you okay?"

She clearly didn't look okay, though. Even in the faintest beams of the dim illumination provided from the wall-mounted lights, he could see her eyes glimmering with tears. She was biting her lips as if she were trying to keep them stapled together, and her skin was already paling.

She very clearly did not look okay.

"…sorry…" She apologized, her grip only tightening on Nagisa's arm. He could sweat that the blood flow was stopping from the bicep down, such was her strength. She continued to stay rooted to the spot and clinging onto her friend, doing her best to remain calm. "…I don't handle blood too well…" She laughed as if to spite herself. "What am I saying, when I'm in a classroom full of people who are trying to kill their teacher?"

Nagisa, in spite of everything happening, couldn't help but chuckle once in agreement. "True." He looked straight at Kayano, offering her a warm smile. "But we are just students, like it or not. It's normal that we're not used to blood and killing."

"You say that, but you beat Takaoka." Kayano couldn't help but smile.

"…if you've calmed down, could you please let go of my arm?" Nagisa felt her fingers really beginning to dig into his skin, and it was painful like a knife being grinded into his bones. "It…kinda hurts."

Kayano took one look down, realized what she was doing and then let go of Nagisa's arm and pushed him away from her gently. Her cheeks reddened a little more than they already were, which was saying something. "…s-sorry."

"N-no, don't apologize." Nagisa's expression grew serious as he glanced towards the cavern that the arrow pointed towards. "More importantly…we should probably go through this already and get it over with."

Kayano nodded in agreement, and the two of them stepped past the arrow of blood and began down the cave mouth.

The walls were closer to each other than the main cavern, making it feel more cramped than earlier. There was also a notable absence of light that forced the pair to rely on their flashlight instead, and that made things all the worse for them as they continued to walk forward.

The silence had grown heavy and hard to break, and it felt impossible to lift from the air.

Slowly the cavern compressed the two together until Nagisa and Kayano were forced to walk shoulder to shoulder alongside one another.

And this only made Kayano more aware of Nagisa's presence, making her unable to calm down. Images of what she'd imagined back at the girls' room were coming back to her right now, the most inopportune time to remember anything of the sort, and it was partially the reason for Kayano refraining from speaking with him even though the two of them were close friends in the middle of this whole thing.

… _maybe…is he still kinda upset about me yelling at him?_ The thought struck her, and she glanced uneasily at him. _I mean, sure, maybe I did go too far…but…_

"…hey, Nagisa?"

"Yeah?" He replied, turning ever so slightly to look at Kayano as the two of them rounded a corner and continued walking.

"Um…I don't really know how to say this, and I know this isn't really the time for it, but…" Kayano looked away, too embarrassed to meet his gaze directly. "…sorry for getting mad at you earlier and everything. I think I went a little too far…"

"…no, I should be the one apologizing. I had the feeling you were still hung up over that." Nagisa let out a sigh and stopped walking, and he bowed his head in apology. "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm the one apologizing now! You already had your turn, so raise your head!" Kayano replied, and she lightly conked him on the top of his noggin.

Nagisa rubbed the spot she'd struck and smiled. "…well, I hope you've forgiven me already."

 _What the hell is with that unfair smile?!_ She thought, averting her gaze from him again. _Stop it, or I won't be able to calm down in this situation!_

And suddenly, they heard the sound of footsteps behind them. One, after another. Calm, like a person who was just strolling forward without a care in the world.

"Is that the next pair?" Nagisa wondered, turning around to look in the direction that they had come from.

"Maybe." Kayano thought about it, and then a realization struck her. "…but why is there only one set of footsteps? Shouldn't there be two?"

As if on cue, the footsteps suddenly broke into a run and got louder.

Whoever owned the feet that was making those footsteps, they were fast approaching Nagisa and Kayano. Each footstep echoed off the walls imposingly, and it was like a scene ripped from a B-grade horror movie.

Nonetheless, no amount of films could prepare anyone for the real thing, and the pair was getting more and more terrified as whatever was approaching them was closing the distance quickly. Heartbeats raced, sweat pores opened and screams were forced back down their throats.

"C-come on!" Nagisa, finally realizing that they were doing the worst possible thing on Earth by standing there, turned around and grabbed Kayano's hand. "We need to get away from that!"

"O-okay!" She agreed, and the two of them began running for their lives.

Nothing but the sound of their heavy breathing and their footsteps registered for their brains anymore, and their only lifeline was a pair of weak flashlights that only illuminated a meter's worth in front of them.

As they rounded the third corner of the path which was marked with a bloody trail of words, hand-marks and arrows, Kayano suddenly let out a yelp and fell to her knees.

"Kayano!" Nagisa immediately stopped when he felt her hand leave his, and he quickly shone a beam of light on his companion. "What happened?"

"I-I think I tripped on a rock…" She groaned in pain as she tried to force herself to stand, and she collapsed to her knees again. "I…I think I sprained it…"

And the footsteps were still closing in on them. Nagisa could hear them.

 _What do we do now?!_

His thoughts raced at supersonic speed, though not quite Mach 20, as he tried to piece together a solution for the problem.

"…go ahead." Kayano suggested, grimacing as she tried to stand again. "It's just a test of courage, so just leave me behind and-"

But Nagisa didn't hear a single word of what she'd said.

Instead, in one smooth motion, he rushed to her side and lifted her up in his arms.

"N-Nagisa?!" She felt her heart skip a beat before continuing to pound away, and she looked at his expression. "Wh-what are you-?!"

"Hang on to me, Kayano!" Nagisa steeled himself and adjusted her body to fit in his arms perfectly, and he took a crouching start.

He took off, completely ignoring Kayano's protests and her half-hearted, weak attempts to break free of his grip. Dashing past the next corner, he could hear the footsteps behind him suddenly get so fast it was heart-stoppingly terrifying.

She threw his arms around his neck and braced herself as Nagisa dashed with all the strength and speed his androgynous body had to offer. As he reached yet another curve in the rocky wall, he found himself unable to turn easily and just gritted his teeth as he forced himself to stop quickly by smashing his shoulder into the wall. Keeping Kayano from hitting the wall, his bicep took the full brunt of the impact.

He clicked his tongue as he felt a little bit of blood begin to trickle from his shoulder, but he ignored the pain and continued to run forward. Both Nagisa and Kayano could see a very faint light far ahead, and he took the charge and began running.

The ceiling of the cavern had already been getting lower and lower, but now it was reaching the point where it was beginning to scrape against Nagisa's hair. As he lowered his body and continued to his run, Nagisa ignored the pain in his thighs that raced up his body in stripes of fire.

And as they neared the light, Nagisa could finally see the night sky and twinkling stars. It was the end of the cavern, the test of courage, and the rest of this hell.

"Hang on, we're almost out!" Nagisa reassured Kayano, not caring anymore as his head bumped against a small stalactite growing from the low ceiling. He could feel his vision go red as blood flowed down from a wound on his forehead, but he couldn't care less anymore.

He leaped out of the hole and twisted his body, landing on his back so that Kayano landed on top of him. Pain screamed as his body struck the ground, and he felt a rocky, gritty sensation on the ground grinding against his body, causing him more pain than he expected.

"Urgh!" He finally let out a grunt of pain as the pain that was going through his arm, his back and his forehead had grown a little more unbearable than earlier.

"Nagisa, are you okay?!" Kayano immediately dragged herself off him as best she could and rushed to his side, checking his hands and his head. "You're bleeding!"

"Don't worry about me." Nagisa replied, sitting up and looking over at Kayano. Her hands, her shoulders and even her eyes trembled with the lingering aftereffects of fear, and he took one of Kayano's hands and held it up for her to see. "You're still shaking. Are you okay?"

Kayano, surprised by the sudden motion, blushed red yet again. "I-I'm okay…"

"Why are your hands so cold?" Nagisa asked, touching her other hand. "See, I knew you weren't okay. Did the footsteps really freak you out that much? That reminds me, what about your ankle?"

 _What the hell is he doing?! Why is he_ Kayano thought in a panic, her tongue fumbling around. "I-I'm not sick or afraid or anything!" And in a perfect display of a late realization, her eyes widened as she snapped her gaze back to the exit that they had just gone through. "Wait, where is the thing that was chasing us?!"

What was in front of them, however, was a far cry from what they were expecting. Instead of a scary beast or pale ghost, they were looking at an RC helicopter with a phone attached to it.

And on the monitor of the phone was Ritsu's face. She waved in greeting, saying "Hello there, Nagisa and Kayano! Congratulations on being the first pair to go through the Test of Courage Mk. II: Karma Edition!"

"Don't make it sound like we'll be doing this a lot of times." Nagisa retorted, scratching the back of his head. "…were you the one making those noises?" he asked.

"Yes." Ritsu nodded. The screen then showed to a display of Kayano being carried by Nagisa as they ran in terror. "I also have a recording of what happened."

"You do?! Why?!" The two of them couldn't react in any other way, genuinely and utterly embarrassed at the video footage of the scene.

"Well, why else? I asked her for it."

Nagisa turned in the direction of the voice with dread in his heart, and that very heart sank down into Tartarus when he realized where they were.

The exit of the cavern was so close to the entrance to the cave where everyone was waiting that Nagisa and Kayano had spilled out no less than five meters from the mouth of the cave.

And of course, the owner was Class E's most troublesome prankster, Karma Akabane. Behind him was everyone else, who was just standing there and watching the entire spectacle.

"You asked her for it?" Kayano asked, clearly seething with embarrassment.

"I set it up from the beginning, duh." Karma replied as if nothing were wrong with what he'd said, winking mischievously. "It's great to have in case I wanna blackmail someone."

"Karma, no breaking the mood." Maehara nudged the demon-spawn with his elbow, grinning. "Those two had it going so well."

Kayano grinded her teeth and clenched her fists, tossing her arms around like they were wrecking balls in a squeamish fashion. "SHUT UP!"

Maehara was just thankful that she couldn't stand up.

"Telling us to go back to the room after all of that…who does he think he is?" Kayano groaned to herself, the very recollection of Karma's face filling her with the bloody urge to stab something.

 _She's totally pouting._ Nagisa thought to himself, trying to hide the wry smile forming on his lips.

After the scene that they'd made at the beach, Karma had simply waved them off and told them to go back to the rooms and sleep. Everyone else present tried to calm down Kayano, and then she eventually did so after a five-minute long scream fest.

And now it had come to this. Nagisa was carrying her on his back all the way over to the girls' wing, and they were walking on the path back to the hotel from the cave.

"…how do I say this…sorry about this." Kayano snapped out of her rant as quickly as she'd gone into it, addressing Nagisa instead of empty air. "I'm making you carry me all the way to my room."

"It's okay." Nagisa replied, smiling warmly. "I don't mind. Besides, I'm kinda headed that way too."

And that was the end of the conversation.

 _Crap, we ran out of things to talk about…_ Kayano's mind was on overload, and she was running through one thing after another in her mind. She let out a sigh, trying to distract herself from all of the sensations she was experiencing simultaneously like a multi-pronged assault.

The warmth from Nagisa's back, which she could feel through her hands and her chest as she leaned forward.

The cool wind ocean breeze that flowed from the beach farther back from where they came.

And the embarrassing satisfaction of a maiden from being carried by a boy after her ankle got sprained.

Nagisa, on the other hand, was trying not to think about the very faint yet distinct pillowy sensation that was pressing into his back. Two mounds, definitely small but definitely present.

Her warm breath tickling his nape.

Her arms wrapped around his neck.

Everything screamed **dating sim**.

And the two of them knew it. And tried to ignore it, as Nagisa continued to walk through the lobby. Ignoring the piercing, questioning stare of the receptionist, Nagisa took the elevator up to their floor and then began walking down the hallway to the girls' room.

They dared not breathe another word. At least, not until Nagisa came to another realization the instant he stopped right outside the girls' dorm.

"…um, Kayano. A thought just occurred to me." He said, still carrying her and not letting her down.

"Yeah?"

"…with your ankle sprained, won't it be hard to take a shower and get ready?" He asked concernedly. "I mean, you're alone here, right?"

That statement made Kayano realize his extremely valid point. "That's true. Maybe it would have been better pull one of the girls out to help us after all…"

"Um…"

The two turned to see Manami Okuda standing to their side, and the two of them yelped in surprise the instant the shy girl opened her mouth to speak.

Caught off guard and off balance, Kayano almost tumbled and fell over herself. Nagisa, however, did his best to ensure that she didn't injure herself and instead acted quickly. His movements were precise and quick, his arms quickly wrapping around her waist and bringing her in front of him so that his back struck the ground instead.

Strikingly similar to what had happened earlier. The pain was much less intense, thanks to the carpet on the floor.

Nothing could ease Kayano's guilt, though.

"Nagisa, are you okay?" She cried out in worry, getting off him since she fell onto him directly and squeezed the air out of his lungs easily.

"I-I'm fine." He replied, out of breath and laughing bitterly as he slowly pulled himself back up. He shot a look at Okuda. "Why are you-?"

"I didn't have a partner anyway, and Karma said someone should head back to help Kayano." Okuda replied, running her room keycard over the door and unlocking it. "So, I followed you two back. Though it seems like you two never noticed me…"

"…s-sorry." Nagisa turned back to Kayano, glancing worriedly at her injured ankle. He stood up and held his hand out to her. "Can you stand?"

"I-I can." Kayano stuttered accidentally, covering her mouth in embarrassment and taking his hand. She pulled herself up to her feet carefully. "Th-thanks."

"I can take it from here, Nagisa." Okuda took a step forward and took Kayano's arm and slung it over her shoulder, nodding to the boy with a reassuring look. "You should go sleep. Have a pleasant night."

"Oh, r-right. G'night, Okuda. G'night, Kayano." He said, raising his hand once before he started down the hallway back to his room.

"Y-yeah. G'night, Nagisa." Kayano waved back to him awkwardly before she entered the room with Okuda's help.

* * *

 _Man, I'm beat._

Nagisa allowed his tired body and drained mind to collapse into his bed, exhausted from the day's events and ready to call it a day. Sleep set on him like a sudden, quick shadow that oppressed his thoughts and rendered him dumb.

… _still, today was pretty fun…_

As his weary mind sifted through his memories, he suddenly realized that the warmth of Kayano's body on his back, the rubbing of her shoulder on his in an enclosed space, the faint warm breath on the back of his neck as he carried her and the sensation of her arms around his arm were the first ones that came to mind.

He felt his face heat up at the mental image of her face so close to his.

… _well, that should be normal for any boy in that situation._ He tried to justify his thoughts, and then shook his head and managed to muster enough energy to push himself off the bed and stand up. _…it's kinda hot now. Maybe I should wash my face._

 _Man, I'm beat._

Kayano thought to herself as she sank up to her chin in bath water. Okuda had done her the kindness of filling the tub, so the green-haired teen had obliged her friend and decided to let her body go to the water.

And yet, when the very thought of Nagisa carrying her the way he did like some action hero and his love interest resurfaced in her mind, she immediately felt that the water wasn't as warm as it was earlier.

… _why do I keep remembering him?_ She thought, annoyed. Images of the entire test of courage kept flashing through her mind. _I can't get him out of my head! Argh, this is so irritating!_

"Do you need help getting out of the bath, Kayano?" Okuda's muffled voice came from behind the bathroom door.

"I-I should be fine, thanks!" She called back, rising out of the water before letting herself sink back into the bath. She blew bubbles with her nose and closed her eyes, her mind once again showing her another image of Nagisa.

This time, it was the memory of him carrying her to the room all the way from the cave.

… _carrying me back to my room with that kind of smile…and then protecting me even though you knew it was all staged…what kind of gentleman do you think you are, Nagisa? It's too unfair._ She thought to herself, not realizing she was smiling.

 _But…I'll admit that you were kinda cool._

 _Just this once, you girly boy._


	3. English Project: Part 1

**English Project: Part 1**

"Alright, kids, I have an announcement to make." Professor Irina said as she walked into the room, opening the door and slamming it behind her before she walked up to the teacher's desk and placed her belongings onto it. "Sit down and zip your lips."

Everyone did so with a confused expression, with Terasaka bearing the sole expression of annoyance.

"What's going on, Professor Bitch?" Maehara raised his hand and spoke without waiting for a prompt. "You don't usually have any announcements to make. Koro-Sensei is the one who does stuff like that."

The woman simply sighed and placed her hand on her forehead exasperatedly. The aura she was exuding, one of strong bloodlust and irritation mixed together, would have frozen a standard soldier in their tracks. "Are you ever gonna get tired of calling me that…?"

"Nope!" Maehara, with a cheerful bloodlust completely unlike that of his teacher, shot back with a carefree grin while everyone else slid their chair one step away from him to avoid the kill radius.

"Shut your mouth, brat!" Irina retorted, slamming her hand onto the table and then cleared her throat to continue. "Anyway, this time, the octopus left this to me. It's about your term project for English."

Immediately, everyone broke into a collection of confusion. Hushed whispers and uneasy shifting in their chairs began making noise. Irina immediately began tapping the blackboard with her finger loudly, and the resulting noise was loud enough to catch the students' attention and return their full attention to her as well as hush everyone.

"Anyway, there has to be a project for English as well as your other classes. The octopus talked to me about it, and we decided on your projects yesterday."

Instantly, the class let out a groan of complaint in response. The typical student's response.

"A project on top of assassination?! Gimme a break!" Mimura cried out in mock agony, slumping onto his desk like the oxygen had been drained out of him.

"Now, now." She clapped her hands to call her attention to them, and they slowly quieted down again. However, their expressions were far unhappier than earlier. "I made that point as well, and your perverted octopus of a teacher agrees." The blonde replied, waving her clipboard back and forth. "So he agreed to allow that the projects be simple. I took it from there."

"So? What's gonna happen now?" Karma spoke up from the back, the only one who remained unfazed. His feet were propped up on top of one another on his desk, his hands in his pockets like usual.

"What I've been teaching you is language skills and social skills. In other words, you know how to blend in wherever you go. You've learned charm, seduction, and some tactics that they won't teach you in school." Irina said, her cherry red lips curling up in a mischievous smile. "So, we will be spending a day in Paris."

Immediately, the class raised eyebrows and made frowns. Yada raised her hand to ask a question, not waiting for Irina to call her before she spoke. "Wait, why are we going to Paris for an exam?"

"You see, written exams are useless for what we've been teaching you about assassination. You can only go so far when you write down what you know." Irina replied, taking a piece of chalk and holding it between her fingers. "So, this is a practical exam."

"A practical exam?" Nagisa repeated, still dumbfounded. "So? What will we do?"

"Simple." Irina stepped down from the elevated platform and walked over to Nagisa, leaning forward and patting him on the head. She kept her eyes on the whole class as she did so, glancing from the eyes of one person to another. "Koro-Sensei and Karasuma are busy setting up a fine dining event." She twirled the chalk once and then flipped it like a coin, catching it in midair when it descended from the apex of its fall. "You will attend the event three days from now as guests. And there, you will mingle with the attendees."

"T-This is an exam?" Okuda asked, her face reddening a little bit. "Why is this-?"

"In short, you're testing our capability to blend in with society while attempting to kill our target." Karma said, grinning.

Everyone who was already confused was now lost, and they turned around to stare at Karma. Meg spoke up first, still trying to wrap her head around what she was hearing. "Wait, what target? What are you talking about?"

"At this event are a number of black market dealers, smugglers and underground mafia bosses." Irina continued with detailing the test, the glint in her eyes turning serious. Her smile had disappeared as well, making the atmosphere tenser. "You are to find them in the event, keep an eye on them and apprehend them when you have the opportunity."

And at that point, half of the class got to their feet in shock. But before any of them could raise a voice, their teacher raised her hand to silence them. "Relax, we're at the location along with your ridiculous, perverted octopus of a teacher and a special ops unit as the bodyguards." She crossed her arms and leaned her back onto the chalkboard, closing her eyes. "Nothing will go wrong, so focus on your assignment."

Everyone, left with nothing else to say, simply stared in silence as they tried to process what had just happened.

"…so, is that it?" Isogai spoke up, trying to recover from his initial surprise.

"Yeah, that's about it. I expect you guys to dress up and prepare for the occasion." Irina said with a sly, devious smirk as she took out a cigarette and a pistol. With a loud bang that made half the classroom start, she shot the end of the cigarette and lit it. She winked seductively and then walked towards the door, saying, "And don't forget your manners!" before she closed the sliding door. The wooden door made a loud sound that made people flinch in shock at the loud noise.

"…so…" Nakamura spoke up first, yet she was just as lost for words as most everyone present. "…what exactly is going to happen?"

"Simple." Karma called out from the back, as laidback as can be. "We're going to apprehend some criminals, assassin-style."

"So…we're gonna infiltrate some party, pretend to be part of the event, look for some bad guys and hand them in to the authorities." Hinata summed up, letting out a sigh that clearly held a mix of frustration, exhaustion and irritation. "Man, this sounds like it's gonna take a lot of effort."

Nagisa just shrugged in reply. "I guess we can just be glad that we didn't have to do an actual term project." Nagisa said while laughing.

"I agree with him." Ryuunosuke replied in a monotone voice, his arms crossed and his eyes hidden under his long bangs like usual. "We're actually going to have problems dividing our time with a term project. This one I mind less."

Terasaka frowned, his eyebrows knitting. "I wonder…are we allowed to kill these guys?"

"No, that's why they used the word _arrest_." Isogai answered, despite the fact that he was on the other side of the room. "Koro-Sensei doesn't want us to become killers."

"Exactly." Karma agreed nonchalantly. He turned his head to face Ritsu's monitor, his fingers twirling an Anti-Sensei knife. "Hey, Ritsu? Mind if you show us a list of the people at the party?"

"Please wait a moment. I shall download the data." Ritsu replied, her virtual avatar nodding once before it disappeared. What replaced her on the monitor was a large number of programs opening near-simultaneously. Numbers and words began filling them, and it wasn't long before the text started scrolling downwards automatically due to the sheer amount.

"What are you doing?" Kayano asked, still a little confused and lost.

"We can't assassinate anyone without information." Karma replied matter-of-factly, slowly standing up and walking over to Ritsu's monitor. "If we don't know who to catch, we might as well be trying to kill our teacher with nothing but a wet towel."

Sugino chuckled lightly before nodding. "Fair point."

… _this is a test to determine if we've learned anything from Professor Karasuma, Professor Bitch and Koro-Sensei._ Nagisa thought to himself. He could feel his tired eyes widening as his blood began pumping faster and his body tingled with energy and anticipation.

 _I have to work hard._

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Nagisa could swear he heard Professor Irina cursing like a sailor at her nickname.

* * *

"So, these are our targets."

The lights of the classroom had been dimmed and the windows shut, making the entire Class E room dark. A projection of a slide from Ritsu's terminal displayed itself on the chalkboard on the opposite end of the room from where she was.

And on the projection, there were a total of 10 faces.

Seven of these people were men, and they looked like they'd come out from the worst of the times. Some had plainly visible scars on their faces, one had an eyepatch and yet another had one ear. They all looked like large, gruff and aggressive-looking foreign men that seemed like they'd been through wars and survived by gnawing on bones.

However, there were three out of the ten that stood out.

One was a handsome looking Caucasian young man that, even from a picture, gave off a powerful cold vibe. His eyes radiated with a mean, calculating glare that seemed like it could stab through bricks with ease. His most striking features were his long white hair that ran down to the small of his back and the single scar that ran from the bridge of his nose to his left cheek in a straight line, as if he'd been scraped by a dagger.

"…he's wearing a lab coat." Sugaya pointed his finger at the man's shoulders that were at the bottom of the picture, noting the collar and the white cloth on his shoulders. He indeed had a point, because the lab coat was clearly being worn over a black suit. "Is there something about that?"

"…hmm…" Ritsu let out a grunt of thought before she immediately got to work, and a few seconds later brought a few more windows of information onto the projection. Various pictures and pages of text came up, and the pictures all presented him with various people also wearing lab coats or suits. "…it would appear that this man is a very influential scientist. He seems to work in the field of drugs…and he has a solid position in the black market."

"So, in other words, he creates illegal drugs and sells them to people who want them?" Nakamura concluded, her eyebrows knitting. "Sounds pretty heavy."

Suddenly, Ritsu's face appeared in a Skype-esque window on the projection. Her expression had completely shifted to a serious one. "…I managed to scroll through his recent transactions, and it would appear that he was the man who helped engineer the prototype for the poison given to everyone at the resort."

Everyone immediately stiffened and scowled at the same time, and their bloodlust joined together and infused the air with its heavy, thick aura.

… _so this is the guy who helped Professor Takaoka?_ Nagisa thought to himself, gripping his pen more tightly.

Ritsu minimized the windows to her taskbar and brought up one of the other two pictures.

The next one was a picture of a lady that was clearly European. Her skin was very white and her hair was blonde, with a large hooked nose that drooped downward very prominently. She looked clearly like she was in her early forties, with several wrinkles on her face. One of her hands was in the picture, and it held a single nail file.

Yada reacted nearly immediately, her table making a loud sound as her knees struck the desk. "Th-that's one of Irina's former classmates!"

Karma was very interested by that, and perked his eyebrow upwards. "Hm? What do you mean?"

Ritsu answered in Yada's place, immediately bringing up a few pictures on the projector of the woman. Several of them were with other women that looked very similar to her, and they were all wearing thick fur coats and hats in a dim, snowy environment. "She's one of Irina's former squadmates for when she trained under Lovro. According to the database of information that Irina has provided the government with in exchange for allowing her to remain here without being brought into custody later on, this woman was her senior and is even more experienced and skilled in the area of assassination."

"So, not only do we have a major drug producer at this event, but also a deadly assassin." Kanzaki muttered worriedly, placing her hand on her cheek and pushing the soft fat inward as she absorbed the information. "This may not be too easy…"

The pictures and information were minimized again, and Ritsu brought up a picture of the third person.

He was clearly an old man. His skin was brown and his eyes were slightly His short, spiky hair was grayed with age, accompanied by the look in his eyes of a senior. He had a serene, peaceful smile on his face as if the picture being viewed by Class E had been taken for a family photo shoot on Christmas day. It was also clear that he had a slight hunch, as his figure was more visible than the other pictures so far. He was wearing a dark green and brown scarf around his neck, and his chin was decorated with a messy goatee.

"This man is a mafia boss located in North America, though his descent is Asian." As Ritsu continued to recite what information she was reading, pictures again came up on the screen. This time, however, there was a lot more information on him than the other two. "He's considerably less protected than the other two." Ritsu appeared on the projection once again, this time with her entire body. She pointed her finger at one of the pictures, where the man was sitting in a chair with no one else around. "He's known for his excessive cruelty and psychotic tendencies. He must be approached with more caution than anyone else on the list."

"Great." Sugino let out a whine and laid back further in his chair, placing his hands behind the back of his head. "So, anyone have any bright ideas? I'm lacking."

"Hmm…"

The class was at a standstill. Even with the boatload of information they were able to procure, everyone present knew that being rash and presumptuous would be the death of them.

"…sending everyone in all at once would be a bad idea, wouldn't it?" Yoshida thought out loud, hoping someone could confirm his suspicions.

He didn't have to wait long, because Karma did. "Yes, doing that is tantamount to suicide." He fished a Butterfly Knife out of his pocket and began spinning it around his fingers idly as he spoke. "We need eyes in the sky apart from Ritsu. We need backup, and we need people who will go in directly."

"…um, I have an idea." Nagisa piped up, raising his hand as if it were class. The rest of his classmates all turned to him, making the blue-haired boy feel more than a little self-conscious. He shuddered a bit in anxiousness before he proceeded to speak. "Ritsu, what kind of event is it again?"

"It appears to be a fine dining event, judging by the transactions made by the government during the past week." Ritsu responded.

"…then perhaps it won't looks strange if a bunch of us come in with dates or something." Nagisa said, nodding once when Ritsu had answered his question. "I mean, it's not a plan, but…"

Yada snapped her fingers in approval, smiling. "Yes, I agree. It will be easier for us to accomplish our objectives inside if we are moving in units. Pairs aren't suspicious, and it's common for people to have dates at parties."

"Still, we can't go in all at once." Hazama clicked her tongue in frustration, pushing her lower lip up a bit with the butt of her pen. "And we need to send in the best people for mingling with the crowd. In pairs, too…"

"Okay, so we'll infiltrate in pairs." Isogai nodded in agreement, and he got to his feet in the "Class Rep" fashion that he usually did schoolwork with. "Nagisa, since it was your idea, I suggest you lead the infiltration team."

He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He couldn't say anything, since he suggested it in the first place. "Okay, but who's going with me, then?"

"The infiltration team will be…" Isogai trailed off, and he scanned the room for the candidates. "Hmm…we need people skilled at socialization and won't look suspicious."

"Kayano. Yada. Nagisa. Megu. Sugino. Isogai. Karma. Okuda." Ritsu's voice suddenly blurted out loudly enough to catch everyone's immediate attention. "You six are ideal to be the infiltration team for this operation, according to my calculations."

"Wha-really?! That can't be true!" Okuda, mortified at the prospect of being one of the group, got to her feet. "I'm no good at this stuff!"

"On the flipside, I have taken into account your personalities as well as your skills, and I have determined that you are amongst some of the people here who will be more engaging to socialize with and thus blend in more easily." Ritsu replied without hesitation, sounding so confident that Okuda felt afraid to speak out a second time.

"B-but-!"

She was suddenly stopped by the feeling of a hand on the top of her head. She glanced behind her to find Karma standing behind her, a genuine smile on his face. "Not true. You've been trying harder than anyone else here to develop social skills, haven't you? Asking tips from Yada and Professor Bitch and even Koro-Sensei…"

Okuda turned a bright red and turned to face him, flailing her arms in the air, flustered and embarrassed. "H-how do you know that?!"

"Anyway, that's that." Karma said, now choosing to ignore Okuda and keeping her at arm's length with a single hand on her head. He dodged her blows with ease, evading her wildly flung, weak strikes so casually that he could be mistaken for a dancer. "So? Any other questions about the teams?"

No one said anything.

"Alright, then we'll be deciding who goes with who." Meg said, standing up and turning to Ritsu's monitor. "Ritsu, can you determine the pairs using a randomizing program?"

"Understood." Without further delay, the results showed up on the screen in the form of pictures. The six portraits on the screen were arranged in such a way that some were right next to each other. "These are the results. Megu and Isogai. Okuda and Karma. Nagisa and Kayano."

"Okay. Now, assign each of us a target." Megu responded readily. "Randomize that, too."

"Roger." Immediately, the portraits of the criminals appeared on the screen in response to Megu's request. From each portrait, a line was suddenly drawn from the pictures of the criminals that linked them to each pair. It looked a lot like a Popplet presentation, but no one decided to point that out.

"Nagisa and Kayano, you two are assigned to infiltrate and take down the drug producer. Isogai and Megu, you two are to keep an eye on the mafia boss. Finally, Karma and Okuda will tag the associate of Professor Irina." Ritsu concluded with a satisfied grin and a nod. "I'll also download the blueprints and maps of the floors and hack in the security system as well as the cameras so that I can monitor everything happening and keep everyone up-to-date on the situation."

"Roger." The mentioned students responded attentively with an energetic salute.

"…did it take me this long to realize that we have the best Game Genie to life in our classroom?" Okajima muttered in amazement, staring at the processes that were taking place onscreen. Before everyone's eyes, the entire overlay, as well as a 3D model, of the entire building where the event was taking place was being projected on the wall in crisp high-definition. It took only a few moments later for the view from the cameras to appear on the screen as well, and they were all in such perfect detail in addition to being real-time playback that it was like watching reality TV with an Oculus Rift.

Nobody had to say anything to Okajima in reply. They all knew not to say anything, since nothing that could be said was necessary.

"Okay, then. Since we have the infiltration team set, let's set everyone else up…"

* * *

 **The Next Day…**

"…yeah, I think you need to refrain from wearing your ponytails, Nagisa."

The boy in question let out a sigh as Yada ruffled her fingers through his long blue hair, fingering the ponytails that resided on the top of his head with a trouble expression. Nagisa simply glanced up at the brunette that was standing behind him, since he was sitting down on a chair. "Um…why?"

The two were in the classroom in the afternoon, having stayed late to go over the details of infiltrating together in pairs. The wooden tables had been moved to the side to make space, and Nagisa was sitting in one of the chairs in front of Yada. Nagisa had also asked her to advise him in the way of infiltration socialization, which had led to the current situation.

"I mean, your date is Kayano." Yada stated matter-of-factly, giving Nagisa a look of disbelief. "If you go looking the way you do now, you two are never going to blend it properly. You'll look like two girls there, and that's not the look we're going for."

"…I see." Nagisa shrugged, giving up on any kind of retort. "So…you want me to remove my ponytails?"

"It will definitely make you look more masculine." Yada responded, nodding in approval. "We need that here. And besides, I had to up Kayano's femininity for the actual night, anyway. Expect to lay it on thick."

"Wait, what are you talking about?" Nagisa replied, bewildered. "I know we're supposed to just look like dates."

"Silly, silly. You have the wrong idea." Yada tutted with a knowing smile. "Listen, acting is not about knowing how to pretend you're doing something. Acting is doing something like you're actually doing it. In other words, treating it like a real date is the best way to go about it."

"B-but I've never been to this kind of event before!" Nagisa protested, his tone sounding a bit desperate. "And I've never had a date or been on one before, either."

"What, really?" Yada sounded genuinely surprised when he stated that fact. She reached for his chin, took it by the fingers and she turned his head around to face hers. "Well, we're going to have a problem. Without some experience under your belt, this isn't going to be easy." She narrowed her eyes, still left amazed. "But seriously? You're kinda cute, so I thought that maybe you'd have had a girlfriend or two."

"N-no!" His face turned beet red in embarrassment, but he remained frozen where he was. "I-I'm not l-like that!"

Yada just grinned at that, almost letting out a laugh. "Wow, you're so innocent and cute too! I know some girl out there would love you to death, you know!"

"Stop making fun of me!" He replied shouted, raising hand to push away Yada's hand that was still on his chin.

"Excuse me! I'm just here to-"

The sliding door opened at that moment, and Yada turned her head instantly to see Kayano standing there, poking her head through the opening she had made. Her eyes were locked onto the pair in the classroom, her expression halted and frozen for a moment.

"Kayano? Why are you here?" Yada asked, immediately withdrawing her hand from Nagisa's face and placing it behind her back.

"I came because Sugino told me that Nagisa came here to ask you for advice." Kayano replied, glancing back and forth between Yada and Nagisa, unsure of what else to say. After a few seconds of doing that, Kayano's eyes focused back on Yada. "I didn't want to be left out of something that I'm supposed to be a part of."

"Okay, then I need to ask you a question real quick." Yada replied hastily, not giving the green-haired girl another opportunity to ask about what had happened. "Have you ever had boyfriends before or gone on dates?"

Kayano's cheeks went strawberry red, and she stared at Yada with an expression of confusion. "No. Wait, where did that come from?"

"Alright, then that makes things easier." Yada said, smiling and clapping her hands together. She pointed one finger at Nagisa, and then pointed again at Kayano. "Tomorrow, after school, I need you two to go on a date."

The two of them immediately reacted with faces so bright red that it was almost adorable. "Wait, what?!"

"You guys won't be any good acting as dates if you don't practice." Yada replied, waving her finger like a teacher telling off her students. "If we don't do this, everyone might fail."

Faced with that bombshell, the only thing they could do was glance at each other nervously. Right after, they averted their gazes.

* * *

 _I can't believe I got hit with that._ Kayano thought to herself.

Her mind was lost in thought as she opened the door to her bedroom. Her mind was still in a jumbled mess as it was remained stuck in the events that had passed only hours ago.

 _A date…huh?_

Kayano threw her bag onto the bed and let herself collapse onto it, sinking slowly into the soft mattress. She felt her anxiety press upon her like a weight on her back, and it only made her feel all the more nervous.

… _with Nagisa, of all people?_

She rolled over once, letting out a sigh as her fixed her eyes on the blank ceiling.

 _I've only known him for a while, and we're pretty good friends._

 _So…why am I so nervous?_

* * *

… _I can't concentrate._

Nagisa let out a frustrated sigh as he put down the pencil in his hand onto the desk in front of him and pushed himself away from the table. His homework and textbooks lay there, open but untouched.

 _Damn it, Yada…I can understand why, but…_

Suddenly, Nagisa heard the sound of his phone vibrating, and he pulled it out of his pocket.

"Hi, Nagisa!" Ritsu's lively voice greeted him as she digitized onscreen with a smile. "Good evening! I hope you're doing well!"

"H-hi, Ritsu." Nagisa greeted her in return, not sure how to respond to the AI that had appeared unexpectedly on his phone. "What brings you to…my phone?"

"I have a message from Yada." Ritsu reached into her skirt pocket and took out what appeared to be a white envelope. "She didn't have your number, so she asked me to deliver it."

 _Only Class E would have a supercomputer designed to kill a superbeing deliver our mail._ Nagisa thought, keeping that point to himself. "Go ahead, Ritsu" he said.

Ritsu saluted once before she walked over to the other side of the screen and tossed the letter casually towards Nagisa's text app. Instantly, as if it were a real, three-dimensional object, the envelope bounced off of the square before it suddenly disappeared. Right after that, the phone suddenly rang with his familiar ringtone and the number 1 appeared next to his text app.

"Delivery successful!" Ritsu said cheerfully, and she had somehow changed her outfit in an instant from her school uniform to a mailman's cosplay costume. "Good night!"

Without further delay, she disappeared, and that was that.

 _Amazing._ He thought, amused.

Nagisa sighed as he tapped his finger onto the app, and the message opened.

 **Nagisa, this is Yada. Perform the instructions below correctly in preparation for tomorrow. Ask your mom or something in case you need help.**

"…wow. That is a lot of instructions."


	4. Profession

_Good day to you all! This is Lord Purple Heart! I would like to thank you for reading this series of oneshots so far, and I sincerely wish for you to enjoy yourself!_

 _I'm here to make a point: each oneshot in this series of chapters is unrelated to the other oneshots unless otherwise stated or specified. In other words, this isn't necessarily related to **Strawberry Milk** or **English Project** , so please keep that in mind as you read onward. The next chapter of **English Project** will be released at a later time, so please wait patiently. _

_Also, I would like to apologize for the delays in my work. I am in the middle of my fourth year in highschool as Student Council President and an actor in a musical, so I have a lot of my time being absorbed by other things._

 _Now, without further ado, you may scroll down for the next oneshot of Green and Blue! I hope you enjoy it!_

* * *

 **Profession**

"Come in, come in!" Koro-Sensei said cheerily, sipping a cup of steaming hot green tea that had been prepared moments ago. He could detect the presence of someone standing outside the door, and he knew who it was. The silhouette that shone in the door made it all too obvious.

"Alright!" A green-haired girl slid the door aside with a very wide, cheerful smile and skipped into the room. Closing the door lightly with her foot, she wasted no time in making her way over to the table and sitting in the chair opposite her homeroom teacher.

The octopoid let out a chuckle and nodded once in approval at seeing his jolly student humming to herself. "I see you're doing quite well. Have you thought out your career path already?"

"Actually, I don't have any ideas."

Koro-Sensei simply chuckled at his student as he poured another cup of tea. "Well, well. This is a bit of a surprise…but I guess I should have expected at least one student to give me this answer. Here, your tea." He slid the cup gently over to Kayano until it was directly in front of her.

"Ah, thank you, teacher." Kayano said politely with a bow before picking it up and taking a sip, and she let out a sigh when she felt the sensation of the warm liquid caress her throat soothingly. The faint taste of ginger mixed with honey seductively assaulted her taste buds. She turned to her teacher and grinned, gesturing to the cup. "This is really good!"

"I am glad to hear that." The teacher replied happily as he leaned back into the chair. "So, let's start from the ground up, shall we? What do you think your talents are?" He asked with a wag of his finger.

Confronted with the question, Kayano immediately crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes, trying to submerge herself into deep thought as quickly as she could. Several of silence passed before Kayano let out a groan and exclaimed "I can eat lots!" with the sincerest smile she could muster on her face.

"Certainly a talent of yours, and one that most cannot hope to compete with!" Koro-Sensei applauded with a chuckle.

"Except for Hara." Kayano replied, suddenly glumly, as she rested her chin on her palm and looked at her teacher. "She can outeat the whole class if she wanted to."

"That's true, I guess." Koro-Sensei said with a quieter chuckle, secretly praying that the mentioned girl couldn't and wouldn't hear their conversation. "But let's not talk about Hara. This is about y-"

Koro-Sensei was left at a loss for words when he noticed that Kayano was sending slightly worried glances at the wall in the direction of the classroom. And when he saw her look back to him with a slightly embarassed smile, Koro-Sensei just chuckled when it clicked. "Kayano, I certainly hope you know what your talent is. it shall be crucial for deciding what you'll be doing as an upstanding, mature member of society."

"My talent?" Kayano parroted, tilting her head in mild confusion. "I dunno."

"It's simple." If Koro-Sensei's smile could change, it would have gone from a normal, everyday grin to a warm, gentle smile that expressed something almost like a family member's. "Your ability to care for others."

"But that's not a talent." Kayano replied, frowning in her bewilderment. "That's something that you'd hear in movies, or read from a manga. It's not really a talent."

Koro-Sensei laughed knowingly, his fingers touching tips in front of his face. "Is that truly what you think, Kayano? The sweet girl that cares about everyone else more than anyone else?" His leg-tentacles crossed one another, his right tentacle on top of the left. "Tell me. Who was on your mind just now?"

Kayano smiled out of embarrassment, but it was tinged with concern. "After he came out and back to the classroom, Nagisa's been looking really troubled." Her expression changed to one of playful suspicion, and she pointed a finger at Koro-Sensei. "I sure hope that you didn't say something to him."

Koro-Sensei waved his hands in reply. "Of course not! I would never to do anything to intentionally harm my own student!" He cleared his throat to reset the situation. "But you see now, right?"

"Well…I guess." Kayano replied, scratching the back of her head. "But how does that talent help me in my future?"

"You'll see that caring for others isn't something that everyone can do easily." Koro-Sensei said, a small hint of sadness in his voice. "So it is my duty as your teacher to hone that talent as early as now."

"How do you _hone_ a talent for caring for other people?" Kayano asked.

"…we will talk about your talent another time, Kayano." Koro-Sensei suddenly said, standing up and reaching with his tentacles for the door; he slid it open with ease, the sound of wood resounding as it knocked against the wall.

"Um…okay." Kayano said, slightly confused but deciding to let the issue go at the prospect of being allowed to go home already.

 _A talent to care about others…how does someone use that for their future? And how does someone train something like that?_

* * *

 _My talent is to kill…I'm suited to being an assassin…right?_

Nagisa thought to himself with a smile he himself didn't understand as he gazed out at the view from the window of the classroom. The clear blue sky that stretched across the intangible ceiling of the world was welcoming and bright, marred only by the occasional cloud and the sight of the moon.

Well, around 30% of what the moon used to be.

The blue-haired middle-schooler let out a sigh and closed his eyes, letting the breeze carry away his anxiety. It was already past school hours and everyone else had already gone home with much on their minds after their teacher had given them a little help on their academic track. Nakamura had gone home with an expression that everyone else had interpreted as one with many conflicting emotions, while Karma on the other hand looked as confident and calm as he usually did.

But with Nagisa, things hadn't gone as smoothly as he would have preferred.

"…what am I supposed to do with a talent to kill?" He let out a quiet, frustrated groan as he leaned onto the window frame and blinked slowly. "This is a talent that Karma could put to better use."

"Don't think that way, Nagisa."

The familiar voice of his _unique_ teacher compelled the boy to turn around, and he was faced with the slightly-under-three-meters-tall superbeing that resembled an octopus with a hat. "Koro-Sensei." Nagisa acknowledged his teacher with a tone of slight surprise. "I thought you'd gone home already."

"I came back because I knew you'd be here." Koro-Sensei replied warmly, his ever-present smile filling the middle-school student with ease. The yellow-colored teacher reached out with a tentacle and patted Nagisa on the head like a man would do to his son. "Having troubled thoughts, o student of mine?"

"Well…yeah." Nagisa admitted, his eyes downcast and fixed to the floorboards like it'd been duct-taped there. "I…I don't really know what to do with this talent of mine."

"Now, now. Don't get so down over it." Koro-Sensei said comfortingly as his tentacle reached out and maneuvered under the teacher's desk a few meters away before it came back holding a small cooler. He opened it effortlessly with a single finger before reaching inside and displaying the contents, which was entirely full to the brim with ice pops still in their plastic wrappers. Flavor after flavor was present, and it was clear that he had every single one imaginable. "Here, would you like some ice cream?"

"Oh. Thanks, but I only need one." Nagisa accepted with a smile and reached out, plucking one of the plastic wrappers from his teacher's delicate hands and cleanly tearing the indicated end to expose the chilly delicacy to the air. _He had these?_

"Keep the other one. I have more, anyway. Besides, the other flavor is a rare one that I would like someone to try. It's blackberry!" Koro-Sensei replied with a grin and placed the second popsicle onto the nearest table, which is where Kayano sits. He returned the cooler to its initial position under the desk and then crossed his tentacles over his chest. "So? What troubles you, beloved student of mine?"

"…it's about our talk." Nagisa said, taking a short lick of his popsicle stick and taking a very short moment to admire the sweet, freezing taste of cola that tingled on his tongue before he continued. "…it's bothering me. I don't really know what I want to do in the future. And I have a talent for killing and assassination." Koro-Sensei just nodded as the blue-haired boy continued to speak his mind and heart. "I…don't know if I want my future to be stained with blood. But I also don't know what I want to do."

"Mm. I see." Koro-Sensei said in acknowledgement, nodding as well. "That certainly seems like a problem, doesn't it?"

Nagisa didn't know what to say to that. He just looked away, the light of the sun that was slowly beginning to near the edge of the horizon no longer bright enough to force his eyelids to close. The glare was gone, and all he could see was a large, yellow-orange circle in the sky that looked like it was a piece of orange paper painted with neon paint and glued to the sky.

… _would Koro-Sensei even understand this kind of thing?_ Nagisa wondered as he continued to do nothing but gaze out the window.

Koro-Sensei was not human. Nagisa nor any of his classmates knew what he was really thinking, or the way he understood and thought about the world was similar to the middle-school students in Class E in any way. And while it was easy to see that he had shown some sort of understanding and ability to relate to them on a personal level, it only served to wrap the superbeing's identity in even more mystery.

"Well, Nagisa, I hate to leave one of my student's in a time of deep thought, but the supermarket that I frequent is having a 50% sale off of the majority of their items." Koro-Sensei suddenly interrupted Nagisa's thoughts as the yellow teacher walked towards the window. He looked at Nagisa, his smile still present. "You should be fine, though. I have faith you'll think of something, one way or another. You aren't alone, after all."

With that, the octopus let loose his signature laugh before soaring at supersonic speed out the window with an explosion of sound. The wind rattled the entire classroom, leaving the sliding door slightly ajar and the chairs slightly disorganized. Nagisa had already braced himself for it when Koro-Sensei had been walking towards the window, so it was only his hair that had been mussed slightly by the air.

 _Goodness._ Nagisa thought to himself with a grudging smile as he glanced at the disappearing form of his teacher. _At least do it outside so that you don't mess up the classroom._ He glanced back at the room he was sitting in, and he chuckled bitterly at the sight of the classroom that had been shaken up by the departure of its teacher.

"Need some help?"

The sudden appearance of a female voice surprised Nagisa very much, and he turned to face the direction where it came from, which was one of the sliding door. It had been slid to the side slightly, allowing him to see his friend's face peeking inside.

For a moment, Nagisa was completely at a loss for words. After a period of silence that neither of dared them to break just yet, Nagisa finally got around to using his mouth to speak. "Wh-what are you doing here, Kayano?"

 _I saw your shoes in the entrance to the building and got worried about you…yeah, like I can say that._ Kayano thought to herself, trying to keep the most normal face she could possibly manage. "I left something back here, so I came back to get it."

"Okay. I'll go get it for you." Nagisa said, walking over to her table and placing a hand on it. He pushed the chair backward to make space for him. "What exactly-?"

Nagisa was stunned to find that under her desk was an innumerable amount of snacks. From Pocky to chocolate to cookies to muffins, they were all arranged in the shelf in such an orderly manner that Nagisa was ready to admit how impressed he was. "Um…"

"Oh, pass me the strawberry Pocky." Kayano said as she skipped over to the table, doing her best to make sure her squeals of embarrassment were purely in her heart and not being performed for real.

"…um…okay."

"…don't tell anyone about this one, Nagisa. Everyone's gonna raid my stash."

"…sure."

* * *

The two quickly got to work, and they fixed the entire arrangement in no more than five minutes. After they put everything back the way it normally was, Nagisa and Kayano sat down in their respective seats next to each other and let out a sigh of relief.

"He shouldn't be making us do more work that he should be doing." The young boy said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair as he finished up his melting popsicle. He bit down and took the rest of the cold treat into his mouth.

Kayano just giggled, and the silence resumed. She turned to look Nagisa head on. "…why are you still here, anyway?"

Nagisa's expression morphed back into one of uncertainty, and he faced away from Kayano; he glanced outside the window, almost smiling self-mockingly at the cliché. "…how did your talk with Koro-Sensei go?"

Kayano just made a face, her finger on her cheek as she thought the answer to his question through. "I don't really think it went that great. We didn't get to decide anything related to my career just yet, and he said we'd continue another time." She sighed and leaned back in her chair, her shoulder blades pressing against the backrest of her chair as her hands remained on her lap.

"…well, it **is** getting late." Nagisa said admittedly, gesturing with his head to the yellow-orange light that was painting the blackboard with vibrant, warm color. "You should be home by now, too."

"The same goes for you." Kayano retorted playfully. "You haven't even answered my question, so stop trying to change the subject."

"…I'm just uncertain about my future." Nagisa stated factually. Yet his voice brought with it undertones of nervousness. It even shook a bit, unsteady as it was while the boy pondered on thoughts most middle-school students wouldn't bother even thinking about; a spiral of uncertainties spun in his mind while other people his age were probably thinking about what picture to post on the internet next: a cute cat backflipping and bouncing off the wall or that cake in that magazine article from the other day.

"…I ate the other popsicle."

Caught off-guard by that completely unexpected statement, Nagisa turned around to see his friend licking away at the popsicle left to him by Koro-Sensei. Her tongue was still connected to the light-blue ice pop, and huffs of her breath colored a steamy, cloudy white sighed lazily through the air. cccc at the popsicle left to himected statement, Nagisa turned around to see his friend licking away at the popsicle left to himcccc at the popsicle left to himected statement, Nagisa turned around to see his friend licking away at the popsicle left to himcccc at the popsicle left to himected statement, Nagisa turned around to see his friend licking away at the popsicle left to himcccc at the popsicle left to himected statement, Nagisa turned around to see his friend licking away at the popsicle left to him

"…you can have it." Nagisa said, shrugging as he turned back to the view outside the window. His thoughts drifted away after that, centering on his troubles once again like earlier.

However, that train of thought was derailed instantly once he felt a tap on his shoulder. Nagisa turned around to see Kayano looking at him with intent and concern, the finished popsicle stick hanging out of her mouth like a farmer's grain of wheat. "…I don't really think you need to worry about it. I mean, look."

Nagisa noticed that she had gestured to something in her hand, and he looked down to see her holding out something to him. It was the popsicle stick that he had left on the table after finishing his.

"What about this?" Nagisa asked, looking down at the wooden stick and narrowing his eyebrows in mild confusion.

"See?" Kayano said as she flipped the surface of the wooden stick to show him the text that was carved on it.

On it was the word **"Winner"** clearly carved into it.

"See?" Kayano asked with a happy-go-lucky smile. "You're a winner!"

Nagisa couldn't help but smile, no matter how juvenile, immature or childish his friend seemed. He looked down at the popsicle stick and took it from her. "…thanks, Kayano."

"I gotta get going! See you tomorrow, Nagisa!" Kayano said with a smile as she waved her hand in goodbye and skipped to the doorway.

Nagisa to face his departing friend and raised his hand in farewell. "See you tomorrow, Kayano!"

The door closed with a loud wooden sound that echoed throughout the classroom. Nagisa's eyes remained on the door for a moment, and they slowly panned across the classroom.

… _I should probably go home already._

As he stood up from his chair to leave, he suddenly heard a sound come from below him. Nagisa looked down to see what had made the clattering noise and saw the popsicle stick that Kayano had handed to him.

 _I should throw this away already._ He thought as he bent down to pick it up. _I can't believe I just left it on the desk after eating it._

As he got to his knees and reached for it, he let out a sigh as his thoughts wandered back to the earlier conversation. _Winner, huh?_ A smile came to his face as he thought about it yet again.

 _Hm?_

He stopped in place when he noticed something.

At the very bottom of the popsicle stick was another, smaller carving of words. "What's this?" He wondered out loud as he brought the popsicle stick closer to his eyes to read it.

 **Blackberry** was carved there in deeply grooved letters.

… _wait, blackberry? Wasn't the flavor of my popsicle stick cola?_

* * *

"Thank god I made it!"

Kayano let out a massive breath of relief as she stumbled through the doorway of a train, managing to squeeze past the doors and into a more isolated car. There was a stunning lack of people, with only several adults sitting down with their eyes closed or with their faces buried in the newspaper or their phone.

She walked over to the nearest seat and sat down, placing her bag onto the cushion next to her. She let out another sigh of relief, stretched her arms and laid back on the backrest as she relaxed the tension in her body.

 _Caring for others is my talent?_

Kayano's thoughts wandered back to the conversation she had with her teacher earlier that day. The urge to do so became too strong to resist, and she glanced downwards at her skirt pocket where a single wooden popsicle stick was hidden. She smiled to herself, not realizing that her cheeks had reddened ever so slightly.

 _I don't think so. I care for people as much as the next girl. After all, I only care a lot for the people I really like._


	5. English Project: Part 2

**English Project: Part 2**

 _I have a bad feeling about this._ Kayano thought to herself, letting out a breath. She was standing outside the satellite campus as per Yada's forceful instructions after the end of a long day. She had brought her planned date outfit with her and had changed out of her uniform once school had ended. Her female friend had instructed her to wear a certain type of outfit, but Kayano's nervousness had left her at a loss for what to select for the occasion. Kayano wasn't that confident in her personal sense of style contrary to popular belief, so she was concerned that she had picked out her worst for the occasion. And she was pretty sure that she did, so that only worsened her fear.

But she personally didn't think that her outfit, which consisted of a sleeveless yellow blouse and a mid-length olive green skirt, didn't look anything remotely close to bad. Looking down at herself, she smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle as her mind wandered from topic to topic in a valiant effort to distract herself. In that same effort, she chose to pay attention to what was around her.

The scene was picturesque. It was approaching dusk at that moment, and the whole sky was painted beautifully with a mix of yellow, red and blue that blended together to leave the sky a gorgeous mix of purple and orange that would be the envy of painters everywhere. The fluffy, adorable clouds floated in this mix of colors and absorbing them into their white bodies, turning them into gigantic masses of fluffy hues that looked like delectable swirls of sweet cotton candy.

 _I'm pretty sure I can handle myself on a date._ Kayano tilted her head as she looked quietly at the setting sun in the distance, the feeling of the cold wood of the wall of the building on the back of her head and the fingers pressed against it. She shifted in place and let out a little breath that was not quiet against the background of the forest. Getting conscious of this, she covered her mouth with her fingers, a little embarrassed. _I don't think we really need to do something like training._

"Kayano!" Yada's voice reverberated from inside the building suddenly, startling Kayano. She glanced in the direction of the sound, which sounded very close to the door like Yada was standing a short distance from the doorway. The volume of her voice was unnecessarily loud, sounding like it could have filled up the entire satellite campus with a single yell. Which it did. "We're ready~" Yada sounded cheery and giddy, and a hint of satisfaction was apparent in her voice.

Just as she said that, Yada threw open the door and emerged from the doorway with the widest smile Kayano had ever seen on her face. She had also changed out of her school uniform, wearing a simple beige blouse on a long red skirt that stopped at the ankles. She was skipping with excitement and energy, and her slightly reddened cheeks showed she'd been laughing profusely. Yada looked very beautiful after her slight touchups of makeup and her outfit change, and she gave off the impression of being the kind of girl that any guy would want. However, her energetic persona at the moment only served to make Kayano think that most men would back off at the sheer thought of approaching her.

Kayano, confused at the emergence of only Yada, glanced back at the doorway expectantly. "Where's Nagisa?" She asked, looking back to her friend with a look of confusion.

"He's just being shy." Yada muttered irritatedly, though the hint of satisfaction was still present in her voice. Her remark was not said without a smile. Without missing a beat, the brunette dashed inside at an astounding speed. Seconds later, she reemerged with the boy's arm locked with hers.

"Wait, wait!" Nagisa cried out, staggering forward due to Yada's pushiness. He was dragged unceremoniously through the doorway, but managed to cling onto it to try and combat the surprising strength of the brunette. Managing to wrest his arm from hers, he still tottered forward as he tried to regain his balance.

Kayano would have tried to help him, but she was rooted in place.

She knew what Nagisa was supposed to look like, and the person standing in front of her was a far cry from the Nagisa that she was close to.

The ponytails that Kayano, as well as everyone else in the class, were familiar with had been removed to allow his long hair to flow down, and the light blue threads reached down to the small of his back in a manner that looked strangely masculine and alluring. His school uniform had been exchanged to wear something that looked more appropriate, and look appropriate his outfit did. A single navy blue blazer blanketed the grey t-shirt underneath, and he wore a pair of matching navy blue slacks as well. On his feet were a pair of black and white sneakers.

Kayano felt quite out-dressed, and impressed enough that she was unable to speak at first.

"See? Even she thinks this looks dumb." Nagisa complained to Yada, gesturing with his arm to Kayano's expression, thinking it was one of disapproval but was really one of mixed feelings. He looked down at himself, pointing out the blazer with his finger. "I don't really wear these kinds of clothes."

"Please tell me you're joking." Yada rebutted in disbelief, her eyebrows raised as if she couldn't understand what he was trying to say. She walked forward and patted him on his shoulder, looking him up and down again and nodding in approval. "You look so good that I think you could date anyone in class with no problem. If you looked like that all the time, even I would give you a try."

"So…what now?" Kayano cut into the conversation, partially because she wanted to know what Yada was going to do next and partially because she found the flirtation between Nagisa and Yada a tad unpleasant to listen to. "Where do we go?"

"Let me take care of that." Yada replied with a cute wink, and she turned around on her heel and began walking down the mountain trail. She gestured once with her hand for them to follow her while she continued to walk, not even looking back at them. "Come on, guys!"

As she went on ahead, Nagisa and Kayano exchanged glances and shrugged, not knowing what else to do. The two of the began to walk forward, and they strode side by side while walking down to follow Yada. The pair was silent as they walked, with Nagisa preoccupied with admiring the natural beauty around him and the green-haired girl still sizing up Nagisa's look.

Handsome. The perfect word to describe his appearance. There was nothing else in the world that could have summed it all up more eloquently. It was really weird to her and almost made the atmosphere awkward because she wasn't sure how to feel about it. It just

"You know, you really look good in that, Nagisa." Kayano said honestly with a smile, scanning him from head to toe for the umpteenth time. She looked down at herself and sighed dejectedly. "Compared to you, I don't think I look that good." Her sentiment was not untrue; she did consider herself plain-looking enough that her appearance contrasted a fair deal from Nagisa's.

"What are you talking about? You look fine to me." Nagisa looked at Kayano and shook his head slowly in response to her statement. He looked her up and down quickly, making her feel a bit embarrassed and self-conscious,

"No, she's right, Nagisa." Yada said, her head twisting backwards to call back to them. "She isn't looking up to par with your outfit, and she knows it. She looks too plain."

Nagisa frowned in disapproval at Yada's remark. "I don't think you should be saying that kind of thing to Kayano. Isn't that rude?"

"Good point." Yada turned her head around to face Nagisa, still walking forward albeit a bit more carefully in order to avoid slipping up on the mountain path. "But I instructed her to wear something a bit plainer, actually."

At that, Nagisa got confused. He turned to raise an eyebrow at his friend, but Kayano just nodded her head in agreement with Yada's statement.

"You know, no one on the infiltration team has clothes fit for the occasion." Yada said, all of a sudden grumpy. "Professor Bitch told us to go to the mall nearby because there's a certain specialty store for formal clothes that will make us fit in with those rich snobs."

"I didn't know that." Nagisa replied dumbfoundedly, scratching his head in confusion. "We need new clothes?"

"That's kinda why we're going on this trip in the first plcae. Karasuma said that the Defense Ministry's paying for this expense, so we don't have to worry about price and all that." Yada giggled in eagerness before her head swiveled back around to face the road. She began skipping down it giddily like a little girl, amusing the other two people with her. "I can't wait to buy all the whole shop out!"

 _I don't think we can do that._ Both Nagisa and Kayano shared that thought as they traipsed behind their companion down the mountain path.

* * *

They took a bus ride to the mall, which was uneventful save for Yada humming a pleasant tune to herself the whole way; strangely enough, everyone else on the bus paid it no mind and let her be. Some people were even enjoying her melody while Nagisa and Kayano sat there, unsure what to make of the situation.

As the three all walked down the step and got onto the sidewalk, they were immediately greeted with the sight of the mall in front of them. It was extremely impressive in size alone, tall enough to pass as a modern depiction of the Roman Coliseum and wide enough to give the Superbowl a run for its money. Billboards of sales and airing movies were hanging on the walls of the building, flapping in the wind almost violently because they were positioned at such high points.

"…wow." Nagisa said breathlessly, unable to think of anything else that could express his thoughts. "Yeah, wow. " Kayano could do nothing but agree, nodding despite knowing that no one was paying attention to her visually.

"Come on, stop standing there like you saw Koro-Sensei get assassinated, though we know that won't happen yet." Yada flicked them both on the foreheads to catch their attention and then began to walk towards the entrance of the mall. She waved her hand and beckoned for them to follow her. "Let's go. We don't have all day."

Kayano shared another glance with Nagisa, the both of them sighing and breaking into a smile and laughing, and then taking a few steps after Yada. Nagisa lagged slightly behind Kayano, the three students forming a sort of broken line as they walked past the doors of the mall and were greeted with a rush of cold air that immediately brought a small but content grin to their faces.

"So? Where is the fancy shop?" Kayano asked as she let out a breath of amazement. She was confused greatly as to where to go because in front of her was a large hallway that had stores of all kinds on both sides. On the left, most of the stores were small outlet store selling specialties such as fancy soaps, perfumes, watches and the like. The only exception was a single crepe store that had a long line situated in front of it that encircled a small group of heavily populated tables twice. On the other side was an extremely large store that had a single entrance, so the green-haired girl took it to be the department store. And indeed it did look like one. Mannequins wearing lots of many different kinds of outfits stood in the windows, posing like they were at a photo shoot.

"Go and ask customer service." Yada replied, pointing at the counter that was almost literally right in front of them. It was a few meters away and manned by plenty of staff members, and half of them were entertaining some guests that clearly seemed like they were in the same predicament as the Class E students.

One group of people there, however, seemed to stand out in particular to Kayano.

One teenage boy and one teenage girl stood side by side, speaking to one of the woman at the register. Kayano recognized the boy's short dark hair and the girl's light grey hair as easily as a child would recognize their favorite toy, and she immediately began walking forward towards the counter to talk to them. "Hey, guys! What are you guys doing here?!"

Nagisa, having grown curious from hearing Kayano's call and tried to take a few steps to see who she was calling out to. He almost managed to get a good glimpse of the crowd when-

"Hey, Nagisa."

The blue haired boy was caught off guard by a whisper that was close to his ear, and he immediately reacted. Self-defense with Karasuma had taught him what to do, and so Nagisa instantly took a step away from the voice and then reached instinctively reached out to push the person away and make distance.

He, however, froze in place when his hand made contact with a squishy object that was so clearly not the abdomen of some assailant like he was expecting.

"Nagisa!" Yada cried out angrily, covering her chest with one arm and smacking him on the forehead with her other hand. She took a step back, her eyes piercing Nagisa with a death glare. "Just looking handsome doesn't mean you can get away with anything!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Nagisa apologized immediately, lowering his head apologetically so far that his upper half was parallel to the floor.

Yada just let out a sigh and pulled him by the collar so that he righted himself. "Well, whatever. Accident's are accidents. I need to tell you something private, so come here." He leaned in close as per her instructions, and her voice became the same whisper as earlier. "Nagisa, remember my instructions? Try to hold hands with Kayano."

Nagisa gave her an incredulous look, his own cheeks reddening out of embarrassment. "Wait, what?! I'm not prepared to-"

"Oh, it's easy! Stop whining!" Yada said as she drew away from whispering range and gave him a look of disbelief. "See here? It's not hard at all." As she said that, she took a step forward and, without Nagisa's being able to do anything, reached out with her hand and slowly took his in hers.

"Wha-?!" Nagisa could only redden further, his tongue twisted and tied like a piece of mountaineering rope during an avalanche as his hand was assaulted by Yada's expert fingers. _Why is her hand so soft and smooth?_ He thought as her fingers met with Nagisa's fingers and slowly eased in between them.

Despite her age, the very way that Yada performed her hand-holding technique felt sultry and almost seductive, which was not good for Nagisa's inexperienced heart. He could feel every minute rub and stroke as his hand made continuous contact with Yada's, his heart already beginning to pound as hard as a punching bag getting smashed by Muhammad Ali. Slowly, Yada's hand closed her fingers around Nagisa's hand, the sides of her fingers stimulating every inch and millimeter of his hand until he was sure that what Yada was doing was not age-appropriate.

"U-uh, Yada?" Nagisa blurted out nervously, unable to control his voice. It came out as a squeaky, high-pitched mess that made anyone observing nearby either laugh out loud or squeal with glee. It was both adorable and embarrassing to watch, yet anyone who could see what was happening wouldn't have been able to blame him at all.

"Holding hands is elementary! Come on, get with it!" Yada replied, raising an eyebrow at him questioningly. She raised her other hand and flicked her finger at Nagisa's cheek as if there were a mosquito on it. It was effectively nothing more than a very minor pain that did not last more than a few seconds, but Nagisa couldn't even register anything else apart from the hand and Yada's face. It was the only thing that mattered to him right there and then, the only thing that commanded any and all of his focus.

His mind was a total mess.

"Hey, guys! Fancy seeing you here!"

A familiar voice snapped Nagisa out of his trance, and he managed to tear his hand out of Yada's and turn away from her to try and recompose himself. He cleared his throat and wiped a bit of sweat that had accumulated on his forehead before turning to the source of the voice, and seeing it with his own eyes cleared up his suspicions from earlier.

"Hey, Isogai." Nagisa greeted with an instinctive, small grin as he raised a hand in acknowledgment. His eyes darted to his companion, which was Megu. "Hi, Megu. Didn't think you'd be here."

"Well, we came because we wanted to take a look at the clothes store to see what we could get." Megu said, shrugging. She pointed in the direction of one of the hallways. "We were just told that the store is that way, but you guys can go first. Kayano was with us when we asked for directions, so she knows where to go."

"Where are you guys going?" Yada asked curiously, her eyes squinting as she focused on Isogai and Megu so painfully obviously that it would have made most anyone extremely uncomfortable.

"I wanted to look for some groceries for my mom since she doesn't feel too well. I told her to stay at home and let me go instead." Isogai let out a tired sigh, placing his hand onto his forehead. "I would have loved to go to a cheaper place, but this mall is where the clothes shop is, and it would be inconvenient to have to go to the grocery store I normally visit instead."

"Sounds like you're busy." Nagisa replied, chuckling. It was a chuckle that, if one had to describe it, was short and sounded like it was done out of good humor; it sounded innocent enough to seem like nothing else was meant by it, was also an effective way of keeping the conversation from dulling into awkward silence. Yada dared not let that comment slip her tongue, though it sailed through her mind as the conversation continued.

"Anyway, we have to get going. Megu said she'd help me out with the groceries in exchange for coming here with her." Isogai tapped his companion on the shoulder and started walking in the opposite direction of where Megu had indicated the clothing store's location. The grey-haired girl followed suit, waving goodbye before matching her pace to Isogai's as not to get left behind. "See you guys tomorrow!" Isogai and Megu both called back.

Nagisa waved in return and lowered his arm, beginning to turn in the direction of the path that led to the clothing store. "Now, we should get going. Where's Kaya-"

"I'm here."

Kayano, who had somehow managed to appear out of nowhere to Nagisa, had burst into his field of vision like a mirage that was both existent and nonexistent. He let out a startled yelp and took a few steps back, much to Yada's amusement. "Kayano!" He said, regaining his composure and walking to stand directly in front of her. "You know the way, right? Can you lead-?"

Before Nagisa could finish the question, Kayano simply turned around and began walking. No words left her mouth as she did so, leaving Nagisa at a loss for words.

 _Did I…do something wrong?_ Nagisa thought worriedly as he thought to call her name and decided against it. He settled for following behind her since it seemed she knew where she was going, anyway. His concern was not unshared, as he glanced at Yada who was following a few paces behind him with her own difficult expression on her face. The brunette's eyes were fixed on Kayano as if she were trying to read her mind like a magazine left open on the kitchen table.

But it was pretty clear that Kayano had something on her mind.


	6. Apples

**Apples**

"Nagisa!"

Hiromi, the middle schooler's mother, called out to her son from the other side of the door worriedly. She had woken up early that morning because her work had demanded that she do, and she had even cooked breakfast for the middle-schooler despite his promise to do so instead. But ordinarily, Nagisa would be up at this point in time to have started cooking breakfast and he was a diligent boy, so it was a bit odd that he hadn't done so already.

That, of course, worried his mother to no end. She knocked on the door of her son's room again, and this time a bit more loudly in the hopes that if the first attempt had not caught his attention, the second one would. When no response came through the wooden door, his mother only grew more worried and clenched her fists again, and this time harder. She rapped the door with her knuckles, and this time the knock was so loud that it would have worried anyone that the door may be broken into fragments.

But still no response.

Now with paranoia seeping into her mind, Hiromi Shiota reached for the doorknob hoping that it wasn't locked. Relief quickly flooded her being when the doorknob turned all the way, and the mother quickly opened the door and peered inside.

To her dismay, her son was on the floor. He was still in his sleepwear, which happened to be a light-green striped pajama shirt and bottoms. He was lying down face-down, his limbs splayed out limply in a disorganized fashion implicative that he had passed out. His hair hadn't even been tied up in the ponytails that his mother hadn't approved of initially but had come to bear with.

"Nagisa!" She cried out, rushing to his side and getting onto her knees while trying to fight back the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She turned his body over to look at his face, and she tried not to let out another yelp when she saw that he was breathing irregular, shallow breaths and his face was clearly flushed.

Hearing her voice seemed to get a reaction out of him, as the boy's eyes widened slightly and he craned his neck to face his mother. But the way his eyes opened looked like he was trying to force them open with an invisible crowbar instead. "…mom…" Nagisa glanced around the room, his eyes focusing on his closet. She glanced in the direction of the closet as well, noticing that the door was slightly ajar to reveal his uniform inside. "…I have to get ready…I didn't even take a shower…yet…"

"Nagisa, stay in bed!" Hiromi said, quickly throwing her son's arm around her shoulder and shifting him into a standing position. She quickly half-walked half-carried her son to the bed he'd been lying down on seemingly moments earlier that was still left messy and untidy. The pillows were strewn about the mattress, the blanket was still unfolded and cluttered around like a rag on the bed and the bed sheet was wrinkled to high heaven, a clear indicator that he hadn't had a pleasant sleep either.

She laid him down onto the bed, adjusted his position on it and began walking for the door. "Nagisa, rest. You're in no condition to go to school today. I'm going to call the teacher with the wig and tell him that you'll rest today."

Nagisa was barely conscious and fully aware of the world around him due to the haze around his mind, but he was able to register what his mom had said. _The…teacher with the…wig?_

Hiromi had already left the room before Nagisa started coughing because he couldn't hold back his laughter.

* * *

 _How odd._ Kayano thought as she observed the empty seat that was only a few inches away from hers. She rested her left cheek onto her palm as the class around her slowly got into their seats and hushed as their homeroom teacher and assassination target opened the sliding door with a loud sound. Without warning, he vanished for what seemed like a quarter of a second before he reappeared at the front of the class, in front of the blackboard, with what looked like a large amount of fine, shining wire curled up in his tentacles. For some reason that Kayano couldn't identify, Koro-Sensei was not holding the wires directly but with a pink cooking mitten.

Everyone in class couldn't help but wonder simultaneously: _Why does he have a pink cooking mitten?_

"Well done, Karma. If you had placed this trap for anyone aside from me or maybe Professor Karasuma or Irina, it would have definitely worked." Koro-Sensei said with a chuckle as he waved the wires around like he was holding a bundle of Christmas lights. "But still! You cannot afford to get sloppy! Piano wire is still visible in the light if not correctly camouflaged!" He then held up what looked to be a piece of wood. "This was a nice addition, though, and I applaud you for making use of an old idea!"

"What is that?" Terasaka asked from the back, squinting to see the object more clearly that was in Koro-Sensei's tentacle. "You're saying Karma tried to kill you with a piece of wood?"

"No, no. Wrong answer, Terasaka." Karma replied, his usual grin plastered on his face and exuding an air of mild amusement. He pointed to the object with his finger once before withdrawing his hand and placing it back in his pocket. "I asked Sugaya to paint some camouflage on that plastic explosive packed with anti-Koro-Sensei pellets designed by Itona. It was supposed to go off above his head the minute that he triggered any vibration in the piano wire." Karma then pointed to the spot above the sliding door, a spot that all the students had walked past. "I even made sure to camouflage the scent of the plastic explosive with a wooden scent I'd asked Okuda to replicate."

 _Scary._ That was the thought that passed through the mind of every student except for the ones involved.

"Valiant attempt, Karma! You get full points from me!" Koro-Sensei affirmed the effort with a raised tentacle and his face turning red in approval. He then disappeared in another ¼ of a second and reappeared, the wires, explosive and mitten gone. "Now, as you can see, we're not all present today."

"So you know why Nagisa's absent." Sugino replied, leaning a bit more forward in his chair. "Is it serious?"

"Nothing too bad. His mother called in this morning. He passed out on the floor of his bedroom sick, it seems."

The entire class stiffened in alarm, but Koro-Sensei waved a dismissive tentacle in reply. "I know it sounds worrying, but fear not. His life is not in danger. However," Koro-Sensei raised a finger to attract attention to what he was saying, and the gesture garnered the attention he intended to get. "I will not permit anyone to visit him today, even if you're very worried."

"Why?!" Kayano, finding that shocker of a statement unacceptable, got to her feet without thinking. "What if-?!"

"Fear not, Kayano. I know you're worried for him, but I care about all of you as well. Please settle down into your seat." Realizing what she had done in a heat, Kayano felt the temperature of her cheeks rise. She shrank back down into her chair, trying to ignore the teasing stare that she could feel her friend Rio Nakamura shooting at her. Koro-Sensei carried on, either unaware of what Kayano was feeling or simply letting it happen. "Now, I have yet to know the details of his sickness, and so I don't know if Nagisa has fallen ill with a virus that can be easily caught by others. I will not permit my students to fall sick so easily."

Upon hearing this, Class E couldn't help but acknowledge the validity of his point, and no one chose to refute it because he was right. Kayano alone seemed to remain a bit indignant but she otherwise settled down, looking both disappointed and worried. Everyone could see it, and the rest of the people within Nagisa's circle of friends also shared varying degrees of the same sentiment.

"Don't let this get to you, my students!" Koro-Sensei attempted to cheer them up, waving his tentacles around in a pretty ridiculous manner that made him look quite a bit like a dying squid. He disappeared and reappeared in the span of half a second, holding three coolers with his tentacles up. He placed them onto the ground and opened them, and mist immediately began to flow out of the top of the cooler like liquid nitrogen had been introduced into the room. "Here, have some of the gelato I managed to buy from Italy!"

He reached inside and pulled out a strawberry-flavored popsicle, and he extended the tentacle over to Kayano. "Here, Kayano! I know this one's your favorite."

"…thanks, Koro-Sensei."

* * *

Weakness.

Nagisa felt consciousness slowly returning to his mind as his eyes opened ever so slowly, as slowly as the hangar bay doors open for a bomber plane. They felt just as heavy as steel, and it took so much strength to open his eyes all the way that Nagisa was tempted to just fall back asleep.

Weakness. He felt weak.

… _what time is it?_ Nagisa wondered, his mind still muddled from a mixture of weakness and drowsiness. Fighting off the urge to fall asleep as much as he could, the middle schooler turned his neck to face the clock that was situated on the wall to his left. With the situation as it was right now, Nagisa's mood had spiraled a bit downwards and the only thing that kept him from cursing was his lack of strength and motivation to do so.

His eyes, after adjusting to the light of the sun that was pouring through his window, managed to make out the hands of the faraway clock.

… _it's already 4…?_

Once that thought occurred to him, Nagisa was then besieged by the sudden realization of how hungry he actually was. Seemingly repressed until now, his stomach had begun to make its emptiness quite known to him. It rumbled and groaned like an iron catwalk being stepped on, and Nagisa couldn't help but let out a whimper of pain as a twisting pain wrenched his gut hard.

"It seems you have a problem, Nagisa."

The sound of his teacher's voice, accompanied by the sight of a super-octopus dressed in a gigantic pink apron with the words **kill the cook** printed on the front, threw Nagisa's already tired mind for a loop. Deciding not to ask any further questions since he was too fatigued to bother anyway, Nagisa just greeted him with a weak smile. "…good afternoon…Koro-Sensei…"

"Tsk tsk." Koro-Sensei wagged his finger from side to side in disapproval, his face turning purple for a moment before reverting back to his usual yellow color. "No forcing yourself right now, Nagisa. I won't forgive it if you don't get well soon."

"…to think…that my target would visit me…when I'm sick…" Nagisa laughed in spite of himself, earning himself a coughing fit when he did. He bent downwards, the pain of his chest contracting and clenching only augmenting the pain he was already feeling from the lack of something in his stomach.

"I'm also your teacher, remember?" Koro-Sensei appeared next to the bed in a flash and ever-so-slowly-and-carefully lifted Nagisa by the abdomen and shoulders into a sitting position, leaning his back onto the wall caringly and cautiously. With his smile only widening, Koro-Sensei then presented a bowl of still-steaming rice porridge to the sick boy. "Now, eat up! No one gets better on an empty stomach."

"Thanks, Koro-Sensei." Nagisa said with a smile, and he lifted the spoon with some effort to his lips. Nagisa noticed that the porridge was just warm enough to be eaten pleasantly instead of being too hot for his mouth of lips. Reflecting on not checking sooner, the blue-haired boy then placed the contents of the spoon into his mouth. His entire mouth lit up in a parade of deliciousness when his taste buds had the honor and pleasure of being caressed with his teacher's dish. Nagisa could almost feel revitalized in an instant, and he turned to his teacher with an expression of gratitude and awe. "Wow, Koro-Sensei! This tastes incredible! I almost feel like I was never sick to begin with!"

"Thank you, Nagisa. It makes me glad to know that you're feeling better." Koro-Sensei said with a comforted smile, patting his student gently on the top of his head with his tentacles. "By the way, Nagisa, did your mother identify what you've fallen ill with? Your friends wanted so dearly to visit you and see if you were doing well, but I did not want to risk the possibility that you may pass your illness onto them."

Nagisa just shook his head disappointedly. "Unfortunately, my mom doesn't know what I'm sick with. She was describing the symptoms to a doctor over the phone, but they kept telling her that I just had a bad cold or something like that. I don't remember what she said because I think I was half-asleep when she mentioned it."

"Hmm…" Koro-Sensei sniffed the air around and then observed it, using his vast knowledge to discern its traits. After a few seconds of silence, Koro-Sensei nodded approvingly. "Thankfully, it seems that there is no possibility to transmit your illness to anyone in your vicinity."

"That's good." Nagisa said, relieved. He slowly shifted his sitting position so that he could face his teacher, his arms propping him up and his hands on his shins. "I don't want anyone getting sick on my account."

 _But…_ Koro-Sensei said nothing as he nodded in reply to Nagisa's statement, but his mind was still in analysis mode. _Even if he can't transmit his sickness, that doesn't tell me what he has._ Koro-Sensei patted his student on the head again, but this time it was not just a pat out of affection or concern but this time one of analysis. His super-sensitive tentacles were capable of sensing irregularities in Nagisa's body such as heartbeat, breathing and temperature at a touch, but determining more detailed information would require Koro-Sensei to examine Nagisa from head to toe using his tentacles.

"Well, I think I would like for you to rest more so that you can come to school tomorrow." Koro-Sensei said as he turned his head to face the window, which Nagisa realized was now wide open for anyone to look through or pass through. "I'll be taking my leave now, Nagisa. Call me if you need anything, but I will forbid you trying to assassinate me in that state."

"I'll remember that." Nagisa returned his teacher's remark with a laugh and a grateful bow of the head. "Thanks, Koro-Sensei. I'll try my best to get well and start killing you again by tomorrow."

"Very good!" Koro-Sensei's face turned light red out of approval, and he offered a thumbs up to his student. "Take care of yourself, Nagisa! I saved some Italian gelato for you, so come to eat it tomorrow, okay?" With that, the 3-meter tall teacher disappeared in a flash with an audible burst of wind to signal his departure.

Nagisa closed his eyes and felt the cool wind streak past his cheeks lightly like an electric fan had been put on its highest power setting for one second and turned off after three. He opened his eyes to see the curtains of his window still dancing around gently in the aftermath of the wind, but the doors of his window had been closed.

 _Just like always._ Nagisa said with a smile as he looked around his room, belatedly realizing that his teacher had set the bowl of rice porridge he had just been eating onto his table neatly without spilling a single drop of it. _Although he didn't spend a lot of time here, did he?_

Nagisa got to his feet and walked to his table, picking up the bowl of porridge and shoveling a large spoonful into his mouth. He felt the energy coming back to him as the sticky, thick porridge slid down his throat and his appetite being appeased. With an energetic, ready smile on his face, Nagisa looked at the time on the clock.

5:30.

 _I need to make dinner soon._ Nagisa thought, remembering that his mother would probably come home from work early to check up on him. _She must be hungry, and I should thank her anyway._ Nagisa clapped his hands together as if trying to psyching himself up and then ran for the door. _Time to hit the kitchen and cook mom's favorite!_

 **One Hour Later…**

Hiromi got off of the train at her train station in such a rushed manner that most passersby stopped and gave her a second look. Those who got a good enough look at her face would have definitely stopped to check if she was alright because the middle-aged mother definitely looked like she had a crazed look in her eye. Those suspicious of that gaze may have trailed her to see if she was up to no good or called the police or other authorities to keep an eye on her but there were none of that type of suspicious person at the station.

Hiromi was not one to simply run home, as she was wearing heels and was still aware that there was a chance that she would trip and fall over herself. As such, she had called a taxi with an app on her phone and then directed the driver to her home hastily. She had even paid more money up front in order to get home more quickly. The driver happily did this and got her to a destination that would have ordinarily taken ten to fifteen minutes in a measly five, barely scraping the upper speed limit and angering more than a few people on the street with what could amount in the courtroom to reckless endangerment.

Nonetheless, Hiromi got to the front door in a haze and, upon reaching the door, realized exactly what she had done.

 _Calm down, Hiromi._ She closed her eyes, released the doorknob in her hand and took a step back from the door. The woman took a deep breath and then other, trying to ensure her relaxation. _What do you think you're doing? You're overreacting, Hiromi. Your son is probably fine._

She opened her eyes, took another breath and then walked towards the door. Trying to regather the calm demeanor that she so normally kept about her, she reached for the doorknob and twisted it open. Pushing the door open as calmly as she thought that she normally did, Hiromi was immediately hit with a wave of scents that clearly indicated that there was food in the kitchen.

This spurred her forth, and Hiromi walked to the kitchen doorway and peered inside, practically dropping her handbag on the floor when she saw what was happening in the kitchen.

Her son was cooking.

"Nagisa? Wh-wh-what are you doing?" Still trying to process what she was seeing in front of her, Hiromi was left stuttering in shock and awe. She could tell that the smell of hamburger steak was wafting about the kitchen, and she could see her son cooking it like nothing had ever happened.

It just didn't make sense to her, though, that she had left her son this morning in a weakened state that was barely able to stand and had come back to see him frying hamburger steak like a chef at a restaurant. She was already holding onto the doorway to support herself as she had ever-so-slightly gone weak at the knees.

"Oh, welcome back, Mom." Nagisa turned around, offering a smile of _welcome home_ that made him look like the perfect stay-at-home husband. "Come on and sit down! Dinner's almost ready, and it's your favorite!"

Left at a loss for word, Hiromi did as her son did and sat down on a chair. She eyed her son as he moved about the kitchen, which Nagisa either ignored or was not aware of. It only took half a minute for Nagisa to skillfully and quickly prepare two plates of the dish and close the stove before walking around and placing the plate in front of his mom.

"…Nagisa, I don't think you should be moving around too much." Hiromi offered her son this suggestion worriedly, ignoring that the food she had placed into her mouth tasted way too good for comfort. "You were bedridden just this morning."

"It's okay, mom. I feel fine!" Nagisa said in an effort to reassure his mother, patting his chest as if he were demonstrating its durability. "Besides, I don't wanna worry you anymore."

… _he's such a good child._ Hiromi thought to herself as she decided to say nothing more against her son's good intentions and put another spoonful of hamburger steak in her mouth instead of saying anything. As concerned as she was for her son's well-being, it just looked to her like her concern was completely unnecessary.

"Oh, I need to go to the bathroom first. Give me a moment, mom." Nagisa said as he swiftly and easily removed his apron and hung in onto the backrest of the chair that was in front of his plate. Nagisa jogged out of the room looking quite healthy, apart from the clear urge to use the toilet that was apparent in his eyes.

 _I think I need to trust my son a bit more._ Hiromi thought to herself as she watched her son leave the room in a nonchalant, almost casual manner. The disappointment she felt in herself was only welling up, the only distraction she had being the excellent taste of the hamburger steak in her mouth. _I don't know how he's feeling anyway. He's the one who knows how his body's feeling._

And so she decided to relish in her son's home-cooking, and her thoughts slowly deviated from their previous train of thought to pursue one of more culinary thoughts. Impressed and almost staggered by the quality of what she was eating, Hiromi let her taste buds bask in the juicy, warm and soft hamburger meat accompanied by a small omelet and rice.

So engaged she was in her meal that she hadn't realized how she'd savored her time. Minutes had passed until a fourth of an hour had passed and she had finished the meal wishing there was a little bit more.

So absorbed was she that it took her that long to remember the plate across from her.

"Nagisa, your food's gonna get cold!" Hiromi called out to her son, silently wishing to herself that she could sneak a bite of the food. But as silence nodded on instead of her son's reply, Hiromi's repressed concern reemerged albeit much more inhibited. "Nagisa?" The mother got to her feet, placing her plate at the kitchen sink and turning on her heel to seek out her son.

Turning the corner only got her to stifle a scream.

The bathroom was at the end of the corridor, so it wasn't difficult to get to and it certainly wasn't difficult to see.

The door was ajar with the lights still on, and the sound of the bathroom sink's water running free was audible from where she stood, and it went on at full blast.

Her son was on the floor.

" **Nagisa!"**

* * *

 **The next day…**

Class that day, to Kayano, was long, dragging and just not as fun as it normally was.

It was more of a new experience for her.

Koro-Sensei had announced at homeroom that Nagisa had been hospitalized the night prior for his illness, which had seemed to worsen for reasons undiscernible at the time of the announcement. This had only served to worry his classmates all the more, and his closer friends had asked Koro-Sensei if they were allowed to visit him after school.

"Yes, you may." Koro-Sensei had said when they asked him. "I checked up on him yesterday and I confirmed the lack of possibility that he may transmit a virus or something else of the sort to anyone nearby. I made the arrangements so that you guys can visit him later today. All you have to do is to say that you're with Kayano Kaede."

"My name?" Kayano asked inquisitively, tilting her head. "Why mine? Wouldn't it make sense to have an adult go along with us, like Professor Karasuma?"

At that, Koro-Sensei merely chuckled and patted her on the head in a kindly way. "You all may be in middle school, but you're no ordinary middle school students: you're the students destined to assassinate the world's strongest superbeing! A hospital visit is no match for the likes of my trained students!" Koro-Sensei's face then turned pinkish as he laughed again, although this laugh contained a tone of mischief to it. "Besides, Kayano! You seemed so concerned about your beloved Nagisa, so I thought it would be best if you were the one in charge of the visit!"

The green-haired girl who was simply staring outside the window felt her face heating up at the memory, and her lips tightened in a pouting fashion. _It's not like that, Koro-Sensei! Damn you! I'm gonna sneak some of Okuda's latest batch of poisons into your pudding next time!_

The day passed with thoughts like that passing through her mind until the end of the last period with Kayano's face already warm from frustration, irritation and embarrassment. But she ignored the looks that Koro-Sensei was giving her, shooting a few BBs of Anti-Sensei material at him when he had persisted with them, as she gathered the rest of their class clique to go and visit him. This consisted of more people than she had initially planned, though, as many were quite concerned about him.

The final group consisted of Kayano, Karma, Sugino, Nakamura, Kanzaki, Okuda, Isogai and Maehara. The group set out with Ritsu offering them directions to the hospital that Nagisa was staying at, providing a level of detail that was absolutely unnecessary; the perks of having a powerful, anti-Koro-Sensei A.I as their friend and assistant were a bit overwhelming every now and then despite their already strong tolerance for over-the-top and unusual situations and events.

Their walk and trip by bus took them a mere fifteen minutes, as the hospital turned out to be conveniently located minutes away from the Kunugigaoka campus. It was later discovered that the hospital was actually built by politicians working with Gakuhou Asano in order to ensure that the students of the campus could receive first-rate health care at a moment's notice. And indeed, the exterior of the hospital reflected such status; the building sat at a titanic ten stories high and even had facilities like the famous coffee company and brand Starbox and the strangely-out-of-place McMickey's fast food chain at the ground floor directly in view of the front door.

"Amazing." Isogai had remarked upon seeing the extremely unhealthy fast food chain being filled with people wearing hospital gowns and doctor's coats. "How hypocritical does this look to you?" Nobody dared to comment on Isogai's words.

Indeed, Kayano's name was known to the front desk and she didn't want to believe it, and she did a good job of hiding her embarrassment. But the ever-so-slight reddening of her cheeks upon mentioning her name to the lady at the front desk for a visit to a Nagisa Shiota was visible to Karma and Nakamura, and they nudged her with their elbows in grins of silence.

That embarrassment was only turned up to 11 when the lady said these exact words: "Wow, what a cute girlfriend he has! And in middle school too! You guys look like you would go so well together! Take _good_ care of your boyfriend, okay?"

It took a strong arm, or rather it took two pairs of strong arms lent by Isogai and Maehara, to drag an extremely frustrated and embarrassed Kayano away from the front desk and to the elevator. The silence on the way up to the fifth floor, filled only by the instrumental jingle of _Dynamite_ by _Taio Cruz_ only served to make the atmosphere all the thicker.

But all that disappeared when they knocked on the door to Nagisa's room, a sign on the side of the door with his name on it to indicate that it was so.

"Come in!" His voice resonated from within the door, and his friends wasted no time in filing in after opening the door gently but quickly.

Kayano was at the front of this procession and was thusly the first to see Nagisa and greet him in return, as well as the first one to see what state he was in. She was relieved to see that Nagisa was sitting upright with his hands crossed over one another with a T.V remote in one of them. There were a few bandages wrapped around his head which made it seem like he had received a concussion or some sort of head wound, but he otherwise looked pretty normal and well.

"Thanks for coming to visit me, guys." Nagisa said gratefully once everyone had taken their respective positions around the room. Kayano had taken the chair that was positioned right next to Nagisa, Okuda and Sugino had sat down in chairs that were a bit behind Kayano, Karma had taken the liberty to stand next to the door and lean on the wall with his hands in his pockets like he normally does, Isogai and Maehara standing next to Okuda and Sugino with their arms either crossed or leaning on something and Nakamura sitting on the second bed that was laid out nearby.

"What are you talking about? Of course we'd visit you, dumbo." Sugino replied, grinning. "How are you doing, man? We've been worried about you."

Nagisa smiled and shrugged. "I've been okay so far. Right now, I'm okay, but the big thing is that I usually feel pretty weak." He looked down at the remote and held it up, and everyone noticed that he was straining a bit to lift it. "I overexerted myself yesterday when I thought I was feeling better and pushed my body farther than I thought I could."

"I b-brought something for you, Nagisa!" Okuda suddenly said awkwardly, standing up and holding out her get-well gift: the stereotypical basket of fruits. "I didn't know what to get you, so I just followed Karma's suggestion!"

Nagisa smiled and reached out for it, struggling a bit to keep it in his arms as he brought it to sit down in his lap. "Really? This is a normal suggestion for something Karma would-" He immediately stopped his mouth from moving when he saw that inside, alongside the stereotypical fruits, was a pink headband with cat ears attached to it that had a note that said **Get well soon, Nagisa-chan~**

 _Never mind. It definitely has the Karma flavor in it._ Nagisa thought to himself exasperatedly, glancing at Karma who smirked back at Nagisa when their eyes met. Nagisa just sighed, rolled his eyes and then smiled. "Sorry, guys. I can't really entertain you or anything like that."

"I've got the cure for that, don't worry!" Nakamura said with a smile, and she brought a wealth of books right out of her backpack. She stood up and dumped it in her friend's arms with a carefree grin, much to Nagisa's amusement mixed with very mild irritation. Closer inspection of the trove of books revealed a ton of manga such as One Kick Man and Food Battles, as well as a few magazines such as Astropolitan.

"…why did you give me women's magazines, Nakamura?"

"It didn't feel complete without them! Besides, I bookmarked a few pages for you to look at! See?"

Opening the magazine revealed a bookmark on an entire 4-page article titled **How to Make Yourself More Feminine**.

 **Two Hours Later…**

"Sorry, but I have to split, Nagisa. Isogai said apologetically, bowing his head slightly as he placed his hand on the handle of the door. "I know we came to visit and all, but all we had for you was manga, fruits and a story about how Karma tried to solo another assassination."

"It's okay, it's okay!" Nagisa shook his head in refute. "I didn't expect you guys to come with me with a bunch of gifts or anything like that. I'm just happy you guys came to visit."

"Alright, I'll visit you again tomorrow! We all will, anyway!"

And with that, Isogai waved his hand and closed the door-

-leaving Nagisa alone with his only remaining companion, Kayano.

 _What the hell?!_ Everything that had happened up until this point had served to make Kayano all the more embarrassed and a bit awkward around him. She couldn't blame most of everyone for leaving; Isogai had his reasons, Okuda was due to tutor Kurahashi in Science since the bug-loving girl was left stumped by some of the trickier problems in the homework left by their teacher that morning, Sugino suddenly got a call from his mom to help her with grocery shopping and Maehara had left claiming some girl from the main Kunugigaoka campus had asked him out on a date and he didn't refuse it.

But Karma and Nakamura were the last ones aside from Isogai to leave, and they had done so while shooting glances at her.

Unable to think of a clever way to fill the silence between them with conversation without forcing it, Kayano decided on pulling out a manga volume of Green Spring Ride. However, reading a few chapters of shoujo manga did nothing to ease her discomfort and flustered self, so she put down the manga once she had hit the halfway mark of the book.

Putting the book down netted her the time to look around the room and really absorb it, as she had not gotten the chance to do so while in conversation with the others still here.

Nothing seemed out of place until she realized that the second bed positioned in the room had a handbag on it. A familiar-looking one, too.

"Hey, Nagisa."

"Mm?" Nagisa, whose attention had been attracted by One Kick Man, looked up to see Kayano looking at him with concern.

"Uh…is your mom okay? I mean…ever since the career consultations?"

"Oh, that." Nagisa said with a smile, his mind calling back to the fore the events that had taken place then. "Yeah, that's more or less solved by now. She's letting me stay in Class E and she even thinks it's pretty cool now. Ever since the school festival, she seems to really respect our class now."

"That's good. I wouldn't want you to leave our class. I'd be troubled if you did." Kayano said, realizing how suggestive her words sounded after they had left her lips.

"Don't worry, Kayano. I'm not going anywhere." Nagisa offered her a reassuring smile, which only served to make Kayano's heart skip a beat with all of the thoughts racing through her mind. The effects had only been amplified after reading some Red Spring Ride, so she could feel the blood rushing into her cheeks.

 _Damn it! Don't do that to me now! You're just a boy who looks like a girl!_ Kayano cursed and swore in her mind, which didn't really do anything to alleviate her quickening heartbeat. "I'm going to use the bathroom."

Standing up, Kayano marched over to the bathroom and shut the door, locking it before she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

Seeing her own red cheeks in the mirror only made her want to break the mirror. But instead of doing exactly that, Kayano just frowned and began to wash her face in an attempt to refresh herself. She almost wished that she could wash the red away like makeup, and she scrubbed her cheeks a bit more vigorously than usual like it would happen if she wished hard enough.

Satisfied with her back-to-normal appearance, Kayano opened the bathroom door.

She was immediately taken by surprise when she saw that Nagisa was breathing irregularly, eyes closed and his arms splayed to his sides like he'd gone limp. The most noticeable worrying aspect of him now was that his face was clearly flushed, like someone had gone to the bother of lightly spraying his head with light pink.

"Nagisa!" Overtaken by panic, Kayano immediately rushed to Nagisa's side. "What's wrong, Nagisa?" Completely unsure of what to do, all she knew was to ask what was wrong.

Nagisa did not reply immediately, turning his head slowly to face Kayano. "…I'm feeling weak again…and it's worse…than before…"

Kayano reached out to touch Nagisa's foreheads, suspicious that he might also have a fever. Mere temporary contact with his forehead yielded a heat that greatly concerned Kayano; Nagisa's forehead was very warm, seemingly warm enough to remind of an oven set to **medium**.

 _Oh, shoot. What do I do, what do I do…_ Kayano, thinking to cool his body down, grabbed a spare towel in her bag and rushed to the bathroom, dousing it in cold water and soaking it as much as she could. When she was satisfied with it, Kayano slammed the faucet lever shut and rushed back to the bed, folding the towel as she went until it was in the form of a neat rectangle. "Here, lie back." She said, and her placed her hand on Nagisa's shoulder to try and ease him into a more comfortable position on the bed.

Once he was lying down less perpendicular to the bed, Kayano placed the towel onto Nagisa's forehead. Immediately, Nagisa let out a sigh of relief that was comforting to hear on Kayano's part.

But that relief died down when she touched Nagisa's arm.

It was burning up just as bad.

 _I need to cool down his whole body._ She thought hurriedly, and she immediately realized that she had no way to help him cool down his body like she had done with his forehead. _What do I-?_

"Kayano…there are some towels in the bathroom…" Nagisa pointed out weakly, his finger pointed weakly at the bathroom door.

Kayano immediately went back in there, grabbed the towels that she spotted the instant she swung the door open a bit violently and immediately got to work soaking the towels in water. It only took a minute for her to soak five towels in cold water until they were dripping profusely with water, an instant to squeeze and fold them and a moment for her to rush out of the bathroom and back to the bedside.

During that sequence of events, Nagisa had managed to cleanly unbutton his gown.

In a bit of a blank-minded state where she knew what to do but didn't think too hard about what she was doing, Kayano immediately parted the gown to reveal Nagisa's body underneath and then placed her hands onto his body to examine his well-being. It was as warm as expected, almost like a tea kettle that had been heated and ready.

Kayano's hands gently began to move up and down to examine the rest of his body and see if anything else was out of order. Her hands smoothly traced his skin with her fingers upwards, and she placed a palm onto his chest to feel for his heartbeat. The other one traveled from various regions of Nagisa's abdomen and torso to check for consistencies or inconsistencies of his feverish temperature.

His entire body was warm. That much was clear.

It was at this point, with her fingers tracing the contours and outlines of his body, that Kayano suddenly regained her bearings and became entirely aware of the situation she was in. Nagisa's entire upper body was in full view for her to see, and she couldn't say that she disliked what she was seeing. His upper body may have been lean and thin as a result of his androgyny, but Nagisa's time in Class E had done what anyone would expect it to do: hone his body and train it well.

His muscles were clearly defined despite being and looking small, his body sporting a clearly defined six-pack of abs. Upon re-inspection, Kayano realized how muscular Nagisa's arms actually looked when bared completely.

"K-Kayano…what are you doing…?" Nagisa's voice came out as a fatigued moan that was accompanied by a reddened face and an anguished expression that would have melted the sanity of most dirty-minded women and made many an innocent woman's heart skip three whole beats. Kayano's mind went into full blast and began working properly again when she realized exactly what she was doing.

Tracing her fingers along his body.

His reddened face. Her reddened face.

This scene did not look like it was directed at a G-rated audience at all.

Kayano, whose cheeks went from strawberry red to full-out crimson, immediately withdrew her hands as if a bee had stung her fingers. She got up to her feet and waved her hands, screaming "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I wasn't even thinking straight, I'm sorry! My hands just started moving on their own!" while also screaming at herself in her mind.

 _What the hell do you mean, "My hands just started moving on their own", me?! THAT'S NOT GONNA HELP ME IN THIS SITUATION!_

Nagisa just said not to pay it any mind even as he himself felt a bit embarrassed, and Kayano just chose not to speak further. She picked up a wet towel and immediately got to work, wiping his body over with the cool towels.

The work went quietly, neither of them choosing to speak a word as Kayano did what she did. Nagisa just looked away from her so that their eyes wouldn't meet, as doing that would only mortify her to death and he didn't want that for her. Kayano, however, already felt mortified to death and that nothing else couldn't kill her inside any further.

She didn't want the world to try anything, though. She didn't know if her heart could take it.

It had been a whole ten minutes since Kayano had wiped down Nagisa's body and buttoned his gown up again, but it felt like a century had passed to her.

The nurse that Kayano had called over the intercom after she'd completed the task had still not arrived after a promise to come in five minutes. Not either of them felt like there was anything worth saying, and had decided to indulge in the reading of books once again to pass the time. Nagisa was still capable of lightly holding a book and flipping its pages, and was doing so this time with one of the women's magazines that Nakamura had brought for him.

Kayano was doing her best to hide her existence from Nagisa by burying it in books, and as such was trying to absorb her mind in reading Red Exorcist instead. It certainly did its job as an entertaining manga, but Kayano's mind was divided between glancing between the black-&-white panels and Nagisa.

And he could tell. Nagisa was not dense, even while tired, He was worried about Kayano, and this concern strengthened as Nagisa slowly began to feel a little of his strength returning bit by bit.

 _I don't want her to feel so embarrassed._ Nagisa thought earnestly, his gaze not set on his magazine in the slightest. _What can I do…?_

As he let out a very small sigh and flipped the page of his magazine, he came to a section that actually caught his eye.

It solved the problem for him.

"Hey, Kayano?"

"Yes?!" Kayano, caught off guard by the break in silence, stood directly at attention with her back as straight as she could get it.

"Could you pass me a plate, a bread knife and one of the apples?"

"No worried, I'll skin it for you if you want to eat some, Nagisa." Kayano, feeling relieved that they could talk normally, offered him the choice as she reached for an apple from the basket that was a few inches away from her.

"No, I want to do it. I feel stronger right now, anyway, so pass it to me."

Unable to deny his request, Kayano gingerly handed him the apple. Nagisa took it casually as though nothing was off, and Kayano proceeded to hand him the knife and the plate. He took those two items normally as well, and Kayano was happy to see him with his strength recovering.

The bread knife in hand, Nagisa immediately began carving it. It was not quick work, as Nagisa was still not up to his full strength. For minutes, the air was filled with the sound of steel cutting its way through fruit meat. Kayano was mystified when she didn't see just apple skin falling to the plate as extremely large chunks of the apple hit the plate and rolled around a bit, and she almost voiced this concern but decided against it when she saw Nagisa's expression of intent.

It took a total of five minutes for the sound of knife cutting apple to stop, and Kayano's eyes widened in surprise when she saw what the end result was. It was a sculpture, or a carving, made out of the apple that looked a bit crudely done but was still quite well sculpted considering the carver's current condition. It was a small piece that was a fitting piece of work for a Class E student to make.

It was a miniature replica of the Anti Koro-Sensei knives that the class was so familiar with made out of apple.

"Okay, I made it pretty well." Nagisa said with a smile of relief. He looked to Kayano and beckoned for her to inch closer, which she did albeit a bit hesitantly. "Don't you think?"

"Why did you make a knife out of apple?" was Kayano's question, and she asked this question with absolutely no clue as to why.

"…well, I felt bad that you're the only one embarrassing yourself here." Nagisa said, shifting his body to face her directly. He lifted the dagger up for both of them to see. "So I thought that it was a bit unfair. I followed this magazine that Nakamura lent me, and I made this." His face then reddened a bit, clearly, even despite the fact that it was already red from his illness. "…say ahh."

In that instant, Kayano felt like her heart was going to burst from embarrassment. _WHAT?! HOW IS THIS EMBARASSING FOR YOU?! OH MY GOD, WHAT?!_ "Wait, wait, wait. I think you're missing the point of why I'm here, Nagisa." Kayano said, raising a hand and placing it over Nagisa's as a signal to put the dagger down.

But Nagisa didn't lower his arm at all, or show any sign of intending to. Instead, his eyes met Kayano's clearly and earnestly. "I wanted to thank you for everything you did for me today. So, please eat it."

 _IF YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT AND SAY THOSE WORDS, HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO REFUSE?!_

Kayano made a mental note to remember that even if Maehara was the playboy of the class, Nagisa was the most dangerous one since he had no idea what he was doing. Giving in, Kayano's shoulders sagged and nodded. Nagisa's face brightened happily and he offered the knife to her, and Kayano's heart fluttered at the sight of the smile that graced his lips. Unable to resist it any longer, she closed her eyes and opened her mouth, ready to accept the gift.

And just as she felt the tip of the apple enter her mouth-

"…um…visiting hours are over, ma'am."

Kayano opened her eyes to see a blonde-haired nurse standing near the doorway, smiling. "I'm sorry, but I will have to ask you to leave."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Embarrassment became the replacement for the blood in Kayano's body, and it definitely filled her system up in the same way that her blood did. Unable to take it anymore, Kayano snatched the dagger from Nagisa's hands, shoved it into her mouth, grabbed her belongings and dashed out the door in such a quick fashion that it was nothing short of impressive.

"Kayano!" Nagisa called out to her, but she had already gone and went, leaving him alone with the nurse. He turned back to face the woman, who was just looking at him with a coy smile.

"You're a sly dog, Nagisa. But I'm glad I walked in, or you may have transmitted your influenza by mouth-to-mouth."

"Uh…you're the only one here who's worried about that, Professor Bitch."

"Finally!" Kayano let out a sigh of relief as she stretched her arms up towards the sky. "Homework's done!"

The green-haired girl flipped her paper over now that she was done answering it and stood up from her chair, ready to do something else until it was time for bed. She walked over to her phone and grabbed it, and she was about to start sending a message to chat with Hinata until she noticed the piece of paper that she had just flipped over.

There was some handwriting on the back. Clearly Koro-Sensei's.

Curious, she inched her chair forward until she was able to read what was written.

 **This part of the homework is the most important one, dear students! I'd love to get to know my beloved students more, and I decided to start adding a Get-to-Know-You section at the end of every homework! Think of me as your pen-pal, okay? Professor Bitch approved of this assignment addendum, so it's no secret at all!**

 **Now, write your favorite fruit below and tell Sensei why you chose that fruit.**

 _Great._ Kayano thought to herself. She refused to go into the bathroom to wash her face or to otherwise escape the question because she knew that she would pass the mirror and see her reflection.

And the last thing she needed right now was the reality that she was blushing.

Here, she could at least deny it.

 _Damn you, Koro-Sensei._

She repeated that phrase over and over in her heart as she began to write her answer.

* * *

 **The Next Day…**

"Glad you're out of the hospital already, dude." Sugino bumped fists with Nagisa, grinning. "We should celebrate!"

"Yeah." Karma agreed, his devilish grin appearing on his face again. "Let's go to Thailand. You'll have a blast there."

"Why are you trying to cut it off of me, Karma? I've done nothing to you."

The sliding door opened with a loud noise as if to announce the arrival of Professor Bitch, who walked up to the podium and knocked it with her knuckle to grab her students' attention. "Alright, everyone! Remember your homework from yesterday? Pass it forward!"

A grumble rose from half the class, but everyone did as they were told and passed their worksheets forward. Professor Bitch collected the worksheets and compiled them all into a single stack and then flipped them over. As she did this, the sight of writing on the back served to remind Professor Bitch that there was such a homework that she had agreed to.

Curiosity got the better of her, and she took the stack of papers and began sifting through them one by one. None interested her until she suddenly remembered something. She glanced at Nagisa subtly, who just gave her an inquisitive look, and then hid a smile as she glanced at Kayano who was staring at Professor Bitch and the stack of papers like her entire life was at stake.

 _Let's see…which one is…ah, here it is._ Professor Bitch sifted through papers until she found what had Kayano's handwriting on the back. She read it, and as she did, she fought to keep the smile off of her face. Once she was done reading it, she just placed the stack of papers down on the podium and walked over to where Nagisa was seated. The two met eyes for a moment, and Nagisa simply tilted his head in question.

Without warning, she slapped his back proudly. "I should train you too, you know. You and Yada might make a good team at the seduction thing." She whispered into his ear softly, a smirk on her lips.

"…please don't hit my back, Professor Bitch. It hurts."

"Of course Okajima likes melons." Koro-Sensei muttered to himself amusedly, sifting through the stack of papers at a human's pace, which was unlike him. He brought a small coconut to his mouth and bit it in two, his signature smile only widening at the rich flavor. "I wouldn't have expected anything else."

Koro-Sensei had taken the liberty of reading the papers after school had ended, and he was now reading them on top of the Class E campus building with the setting sun kissing the horizon in front of him. He'd even brought some coconuts from Hawaii to enjoy as he read his students' papers.

"…I take that back." Koro-Sensei said after putting some thought into the matter. "I wouldn't be surprised to hear if Okajima liked coconuts too." As he put down Okajima's worksheet, he found Isogai's next. An extremely concise essay about his love for bananas and their price range in the market was to be found on the worksheet, which Koro-Sensei found rather amusing to read. He was amused by Karma's choice of durians and the explanation for it; it was simple for Karma to pick the durian because it had spikes around it and hurt the careless, ignorant people who didn't know how to handle it right yet it still had a great taste despite its exterior.

"Professor Irina told me to save Kayano's for last…" Koro-Sensei said to himself as if he were trying to remind himself of that note, and he reached for the worksheet at the very bottom of the pile. He had positioned the worksheet there since it was easy to leave it for last by placing it there.

He fished the paper out with a tentacle and brought it closer to his face since the setting sun was working against reading it well. But the superbeing that had specs suitable for outrunning a trailing comet did his utter best in reading the short essay.

 **Dear Koro-Sensei,**

 **I haven't had a favorite fruit for a long time. I can't remember the last time I was asked that question, either. I never really thought about it that much, so I don't know if I can answer the question well. I like eating sweets. You know that best. But I do like it when fruits are peppered in my sweets, like when there are strawberries in my parfaits, my snacks and my pudding. Actually, now that I think about it, I probably would have answered with strawberries.**

 **I would have answered with strawberries if recent events didn't make me think otherwise. Keep this a secret between us, okay, Koro-Sensei? Take this secret down to your grave.**

 _Of course, Kayano._ Koro-Sensei stopped reading to offer her that promise in his heart despite her absence in his immediate vicinity. He looked up to the sky and twisted one finger over another at the end of his tentacle. "Alright, alright! I've made my promise!" With his resolve set, Koro-Sensei looked down at the paper to read the last part.

 **I know this is gonna sound a bit cliché, but I swear that I'm telling you the truth. I like…no, I love apples.**

A small heart mark was doodled at the end of the sentence.


	7. Miracles Taste Like Strawberries

_I'm so sorry for the lack of updates, guys! I've been kinda busy as of late, but I had a new computer rig built, I took driving lessons and I'm transferring schools so I've been slacking off a bit too much. And I've been making an original Dungeons-and-Dragons-style tabletop game for a while now, so that eats up time too. Thank you for reading my works up until this point, and I sure hope you stick with me for the times to come!_

 **Miracles Taste Like Strawberries**

 _The whistle of the evening wind as it soared through the navy blue sky. The dull hubbub of people walking alongside one another as they enjoy food from the candy-colored stands around them. The frustrated cries of children as their goldfish-catching nets break and the cries of success from others who managed to shoot their prize off of the shelf with a cork gun. The sound of shoes, sandals and slippers hitting the floor at various rhythms. The sweet smell of food wafting throughout the air..._

"Hey, hey! Selling octopus balls at 100 Yen for 3 pieces!" "Ladies and gentlemen, pancakes for 200 Yen!" A voice completely unlike everyone else's suddenly increased and volume and pierced through the crowd, drawing attention. People turned their heads towards the source of the noise, only to get promptly confused.

 _Although we could certainly do without that sound._

Nagisa, his thoughts interrupted by the loud cries, could only stare in amazement as he saw his own homeroom teacher, the superbeing that was going to destroy the world next year, using his speed to sell food at stands to get by for his paycheck. To his trained eyes as an assassin-student, Nagisa could see an extremely faint blur on the edges of his teacher's outline. Without that blur, he would've that that there were at least fifteen of his teacher manning fifteen separate stalls all at the same time.

Nagisa couldn't help but be impressed as he watched his homeroom teacher easily handling dozens and dozens of customers at a number of separate stalls simultaneously. His empty stomach troubled him again as he heard a rumble in his abdomen that brought with it a feeling of emptiness that the middle-schooler did not like very much. He rubbed his stomach with his fingers and looked down at it, a bit embarassed that it was loud enough to be heard in the middle of the summer festival with tons of people making noise.

Deciding not to mind his mortification, the blue-haired boy walked over to the nearest stall that his teacher was manning absentmindedly. His eyes were fixed on the food that was being cooked in front of him. The staple of summer festivals, octopus balls, were being cooked quite exquisitely in front of his eyes as if he were watching a cooking anime.

"Nagisa! I'm so glad that you came here for me!" Koro-Sensei said with his signature grin, which didn't seem to fade at all despite his afterimage being the one to speak to him. "I didn't want to come to this festival alone, so I'm so happy that you helped me get some of my students to come tonight!"

"Uh, no problem..." Nagisa replied with a smile before glancing down at the octopus balls being cooked in front of them. The young man swallowed his saliva in desire as the scent of delicious food wafted into his nostrils and stimulated his taste buds. His stomach rumbled a second time, and this time even louder than previously. Nagisa's cheeks reddened out of embarrassment and he covered his stomach out of reflex. Koro-Sensei's only reaction was to look at him with his normal smile as a tentacle suddenly drifted into Nagisa's point of view. He looked up to realize that the tentacle was grasping a small Styrofoam carrying case, the lid left hanging open to reveal the contents: octopus balls.

"Go ahead and have some, Nagisa. I couldn't be called a teacher if I saw my own student with that expression and didn't give him something to eat." Koro-Sensei said kindly, another tentacle temporarily patting Nagisa on the head before withdrawing as Koro-Sensei began whirling up a batch of cotton candy in the neighboring stall.

Nagisa took the octopus balls with gratitude and began slowly devouring them while watching Koro-Sensei toil away. As time passed, Nagisa could see that the outline of the multiple afterimages cooking the food slowly began to dissipate until he was becoming more of a mirage. Five minutes passed and the lines of people only increased, and even Nagisa's trained eye was having difficulty registering his teacher's speed.

But he could make out his teacher's expression as well as read his body language: even Koro-Sensei was struggling a bit.

"Koro-Sensei, let me help you out!" Nagisa said right after swallowing the last of his food and approaching the counter of the octopus ball stand that now had a seven-person-strong line. "You seem to be having a bit of a hard time."

"Your teacher would be very grateful if you did that for him!" Koro-Sensei said, relieved, as his afterimage disappeared from the stand entirely. "Quickly, Nagisa! Get to cooking!"

"Got it!" Nagisa said, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket and cracking his knuckles. He raised his head and met eyes with the first customer at the counter, which happened to be a young woman in a _yukata_. "Good evening! What would you like?" The lady seemed to waste no time replying as she crankily replied, "I'll have twelve octopus balls, kid. And make it snappy!"

 _Wow, to think that people who speak like that still exist, huh?_ Nagisa thought to himself as he heard her unrealistically unpleasant voice. As he began pouring the batter onto the fryer, it only took five seconds for another voice to call out to him. "Hey, Nagisa! You doing a part-time job or something?"

He quickly glanced in the direction of the voice, but he didn't have to look to know that Kayano was the owner of the voice. "Nah. I just figured I'd help Koro-Sensei with the stalls since he looked like he was having a hard time."

"I see! That's nice of you!" Kayano replied, grinning. "Well, don't mind if I line up for some too." Nagisa nodded and pointed to the back of the line before returning his attention to the fryer in front of him. He took a handful of chopped octopus and the cup full of batter and poured in both simultaneously. He repeated this process until the entire pan was full.

 _Maybe I shouldn't have offered to help with something I didn't really know how to cook._ Nagisa thought to himself in regret as he realized that he was arbitrarily cooking the food without extensive knowledge of what he should actually be doing or watching out for. He glanced up at the line again, a bit worried. _I hope they don't dislike the taste of the octopus balls._ Immediately, a small onset of insecurity besieged him and Nagisa tried not to feel unsettled for fear he actually screw up what he was doing.

He reached out with a toothpick and attempted turn over one of the cooking octopus balls. As he did so, Nagisa realized that his hand was shaking ever-so-slightly when it entered his field of vision. He bit his lip, the realization that he was nervous only multiplying his nervousness twofold, and he slowly began to turn the octopus ball over with the toothpick.

Right as the toothpick slowly began to tear into the batter, a cry from out nowhere suddenly emerged and made Nagisa jump back in sheer fright. He looked up to see the source of the noise and he was somewhat stunned to see that it was Kayano again. However, this time she wore a distressed expression on her face as she rushed over to Nagisa's side. She shoved him aside without a second thought, the surprising amount of strength in addition to Nagisa's lack of resistance forcing his body back almost a full meter away from the cooker. "What are you doing to the octopus balls, Nagisa?!"

Kayano immediately snatched two toothpicks, one in each hand, and then expertly flipped them over in a manner that rivalled Itona's skill in machinery. She turned to face him and placed her hands on her hips, clearly somewhat upset. "You're gonna burn them if you do it like that!"

"S-sorry." Nagisa apologized sheepishly, bowing his head. "I offered to help Koro-Sensei, but truthfully I didn't exactly know what I was doing…"

"Sounds exactly like you." Kayano's expression softened and she couldn't help but smile a small smile. She raised a fist and knocked Nagisa on the shoulder lightly and playfully, winking. "But you can't do this alone, so let me give you a hand with things like this."

"…thanks." Nagisa could only graciously and humbly accept the offer. There was probably no other authority on food in Class E like Kayano apart from Hara, and Nagisa didn't even know if she was here at the festival to begin with.

Kayano quickly plucked an apron hanging from a hook behind Nagisa and tied it on in no time at all, her smile widening into one of glee and excitement. She then moved closer to Nagisa and grabbed a small Styrofoam container. "Quickly, get two more of these." She said this as she opened the lid and, utilizing the two toothpicks she'd grabbed previously and using them like miniature chopsticks, Kayano expertly transported the octopus balls one by one into the container. Nagisa tried not to let his amazement at her prowess perturb him, quickly taking the filled Styrofoam container from her hand and giving her an empty one to replace it.

"Here you go, ma'am!" Nagisa cried out customarily as he handed the container to the foremost customer from earlier. The woman took it wordlessly, only letting out a small murmur of thanks after receiving all of the octopus balls she had ordered. Digging some money out of her pocket, the woman handed Nagisa her payment and then quickly scuttled off to do her business which Nagisa felt secretly thankful for.

"Nagisa! Quickly, here! The next batch!"

"Oh, right!"

"Thank you very much, Kayano and Nagisa!" Koro-Sensei's afterimage thanked the two of them with a warm smile white rubbing them on the top of their heads while another afterimage was already manning the octopus ball stand readily and serving customers at top speed. "I'm very lucky to have such helpful students as my very own!"

Nagisa felt a little fuzzy inside at hearing that, though he also detected a hint of embarrassment in himself for feeling that way. As Koro-Sensei's tentacle left his head, he found himself placing his own hand on the same spot as if he were longing for another rubbing. "N-no problem, Koro-Sensei!" He said both cheerfully and thankfully.

"As my extended thanks, feel free to help yourself to these!" In a split-second, Koro-Sensei's afterimage disappeared and reappeared with a package of octopus balls for each of them. He placed it into his students' hands and then nodded approvingly. "If you feel like having any food at all at this festival, feel free to approach any of the stalls I'm manning! If I have any left, then I'll treat you to some!"

"Sure thing!" Kayano replied loudly, the answer so loud that Nagisa winced since they were right next to each other. Her mood shift from normally happy to cheerful-as-hell was so abrupt that even Koro-Sensei seemed to react somewhat and it showed on his face. But it was immediately replaced by an even wider smile.

"That's the spirit! Now! Go enjoy the summer festival! It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enjoy it!" And without further ado, the afterimage vanished with a whoosh of air that tousled Nagisa's and Kayano's hair. The two of them just looked at each other after that and laughed after a while, and then took a breath and let it out in a big exhale not unlike those that people would do after radio calisthenics.

"So? What do you want to do, Nagisa?" She asked as she opened the container in her hands and quickly got to work on the octopus balls gifted to her. Letting out a tiny yelp when the extremely hot surface of the treat made contact with her lips, she set to blowing air from her mouth onto the surface of the octopus ball to try and alleviate some of the heat. She did this while her eyes were still fixed on Nagisa, awaiting his reply.

"Um…" Nagisa had no idea of what he actually did want to do, but he did know that he wanted to thank Kayano for helping him cook. _I can't even treat her to food now that Koro-Sensei's on our side._ Nagisa thought that to himself, amused, as he looked out across the plethora of food stands all being manned by the same person. "For starters, how about we walk around first? Maybe we'll find something to do once we come across it."

"Alrighty." Kayano said, wolfing down another octopus ball before tugging onto Nagisa's arm with her free hand. "Let's go, then! I'm gonna get bored if we just wait around here and do nothing!"

Nagisa had no choice to get pulled along, and the two began strolling along the lines of stalls that had been set up in the area. Ignoring the large amounts of Koro-Sensei-afterimages that they were passing, the pair of junior-high students were enthralled by the colorful stands and displays. There weren't a lot of people at this particular festival, for some reason, so there were still plenty of game stands that held prizes that could still be won.

"Oh, wow! Look at that!" Kayano said gleefully as she pointed at one of the stands, and Nagisa moved in closer to see. The stand that she was pointing at was a very large stand that, despite being colored pink and even had a few frills surrounding the counter, was manned by an extremely intimidating and large man. He was bald, had a single large scar running down his forehead and had a glare that scared off the small children that had huddled by moments earlier to look at the prizes. He was so immense that looking at the prizes or even the game that was probably situated behind him was impossible without moving him out of the way.

"Uh…what about it?" Nagisa asked, quizzical as to why Kayano would show any interest in the stall. He himself felt the presence of the occupant of the stall imposing enough to erect an invisible barrier Nagisa wouldn't dare cross without being held at gunpoint. "Do you wanna take a picture or something?"

"No, silly. Let's check it out!" She said, laughing before taking him by the hand and tugging him over to the stall. Stopping in front of the counter, Nagisa was trying not to let his fear or nervousness show on his face as he was faced with a human being that, when viewed up close, rivaled his homeroom teacher's height of three meters on tip-tentacle. Kayano did not appear fazed at all, instead smiling and approaching the man ordinarily. "Hey, mister! Can I take a look at the game you've got here!"

Immediately, the man grinned and replied, "Sure thing, young lady!" He moved out of the way, and only then did Nagisa realize that the man's eyes looked extremely nice and passive. No threat whatsoever registered to Nagisa's senses, and he couldn't help but feel a bit stupid for not noticing it earlier.

Moving out of the way made Kayano squeal with delight loudly enough to turn heads from all around the pair, and Nagisa tried to ignore the stares and instead focus on why Kayano had reacted the way she did. Seeing it, though, made the air in his lungs escape. It was a ring-toss game, and pretty standard as well. There were a number of bottles, each color-coded and with a number on them to dictate their value in points. But one of the prizes blew Nagisa's mind out of the water, and it was most likely the one that had garnered Kayano's attention: a gigantic Pocky box that was clearly, at least, Kayano's height. _How the…?!_ Nagisa was completely mystified, but eagerness slowly began to bubble up in his system. It was definitely a prize worth trying for; it even held an aura of challenge that seemed to beckon to him. Something that cried out for a challenger that could rightfully claim it as theirs.

He wasn't the only one to sense this. "H-how much to try for it?!" Kayano asked excitedly, hopping on the balls of her feet like a little child. Nagisa had to hold back a smile while looking at her.

"You can try it out for 750 yen, young lady."

 _Expensive! Way too expensive!_ Nagisa tried not to let his thoughts blurt out, but that was the first thing that came into his mind when he heard the price tag being dictated. His jaw slacked when he saw Kayano immediately hand him a stack of bills that easily looked more than twice the amount. Kayano caught his stare and laughed it off before turning back to the large man and taking the multicolored throwing balls from his hand. He moved further to the side since his extremely large frame would get in the way of her throws, leaving the entire range to her trained eyes. Kayano's eyesight may not have been like that of Rinka or Isogai, but it was still that of a worthy assassin.

Juggling the other two throwing balls in one hand and grasping with her right hand one more, Kayano squinted as she looked out at the large array of targets before her. It was an expanse of open bottles with all of the open sides facing the sky, and each was colored differently on the rims. There were a number of different colors and a legend on the wall that showed how much points each color meant. Seemingly without reserve, Kayano immediately tossed one of the rings towards the centermost target that was surrounded on all sides with other bottles, the centermost being the only one to offer the number of points that it did. It seemed like a haphazard attempt that wouldn't succeed, and it lived up to that expectation as it bounced off of the target.

"Hmm…I guess that was a bad idea." Kayano muttered under her breath, regret beginning to register as she looked down at the remaining two spheres in her hand. "But I can't really get the Pocky without three perfect tries, so I'll just try for that instead." Kayano's eyes darted momentarily to the collection of masks on the wall that looked of surprisingly high quality.

Her next two tries, however, bore no fruit and they did not fall into the bottles despite her best attempts. "Wait, what the heck?! Why won't they go in?!" Kayano's expression had morphed into a mix of confusion and frustration, and she turned to Nagisa with that expression clearly written on her face. "Seriously, how can anyone get it it's too hard for people like me to get it?!"

It sounded egotistic, and it probably would register that way to anyone else apart from fellow Class E students. But Nagisa knew what she meant: they were assassins-in-training. If they couldn't get it, the game was far too difficult to even consider trying for normal people. Of course, however, those normal people weren't going to know that and have their money plucked out of their wallets

Nagisa trailed off when he took his eyes off of the lineup of prizes and the targets to glance at his companion. She stared at the box of Pocky like her dog had died; she looked like she wanted it so badly that she could give up the bounty on her homeroom teacher's head. She wore a near-tearful expression that Nagisa was taken off-guard by.

Seeing that, Nagisa just sighed and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked at him quizzically, turning that same expression towards him and making Nagisa get stricken with a feeling of unease. The facial expression of frustration, tantalization and desire coupled with glassy eyes that reflected moonlight in them made Nagisa's breath run out of his lungs like 9/11 had been re-enacted in his lungs. Trying to ignore the moe-fuel that was his companion, he wordlessly gestured for her to move aside. She did so, never losing her quizzical look, and Nagisa walked over to the man at the stand.

The big man suddenly leaned in close, ignoring the outstretched hand clutching a handful of bills that belonged to Nagisa. "…I understand that you want to try getting it for your girlfriend, so I'll cut you a deal. If you can manage to get it inside the center-bottle once, I'll give you the box."

Nagisa could feel his temperature rising from embarrassment, but he managed to make his throat work for him instead of against him. "…she's not my girlfriend."

The man raised an eyebrow sarcastically and smirked. "…want her to be?"

"Be quiet and take my cash, sir." Nagisa said as politely as he could without either punching the middle-aged tease out of embarrassment or running off out of embarrassment. His tone was strained enough that the man just laughed in reply, winked not-so-subtly and handed Nagisa his ammunition. Ignoring the man, who was brimming with amusement, Nagisa took a position to see his targets from a good vantage point.

A difficult thing to do when he was as short as he is.

After a moment's hesitation, Nagisa performed an experimental throw of the ball in his hand. It arced through the air and then landed directly on the rim of the centermost bottle before bouncing outward and away from all of the bottles. _I expected it to do that._ Nagisa thought to himself unhappily, waiting for the ball to bounce away and onto the floor so that he could give in and then begin throwing the other two balls in vain.

He would be lying if he were disappointed that the ball had not gone in, but Nagisa also knew that he probably wasn't going to do much better than Kayano anyway. The chances of actually winning the box fair and square were so low that he could try to do the limbo under them and fail horribly.

So Nagisa was taken aback when the ball bounced off of the rim of another bottle and began bouncing off of bottles again and again on their own. It happened over and over again, practically becoming an attraction in and of itself. It ricocheted off of a bottle on the outermost area of the targets, only to bounce back inward and keep doing so with no end in sight.

"Wh-what!? N-Nagisa?! How are you doing that?!" Kayano was completely flabbergasted, entranced with the incredible display of what seemed like precision at its finest when in reality it was the result of dumb luck. "It's like something Chiba or Rinka would be able to pull off!"

Nagisa, also unnerved, glanced to the guy manning the booth for an explanation. But he just shrugged, clueless to the rapid turn of events. Nagisa eyed the man even more intently, but he did nothing.

The junior-high student glanced back at the bottles and found his jaw dropping when the ball dropped into the centermost bottle after what felt like an eternity of bouncing. He wasn't alone; Kayano, who was standing next to him and was leaning over the counter so far that she could have fallen over onto the other side and smashed her face into the dirt, was also clearly slack jawed in a mix of awe and disbelief.

"N-N-N-Nagisa!" Kayano immediately righted herself so quickly that the speed felt on par with Koro-Sensei's own ability, and she grabbed Nagisa by the hem of his shirt and brought his face so close to hers that their noses were practically touching. "You have to teach me how to do that! After you win!"

"Wah!" Nagisa let out a startled cry in response to Kayano's abrupt action, but he was effectively trapped in the killer grip of a sweets-loving girl shorter than he was. "Wait, hang on! What happened was sheer luck! I don't even know how it happened, Kayano! It just did!"

"Like hell it did!" Kayano replied almost angrily, pulling Nagisa a millimeter closer. It was distance short enough that speaking at that level of closeness granted Nagisa the privilege of feeling Kayano's warm breath that smelled suspiciously sweet and pleasant stroking his cheeks like a gentle hand's caress. It was a distance close enough and a situation so unexpected that Nagisa had immediately grown overly conscious of everything he was sensing, feeling and experiencing.

The unexpectedly lovely warmth that was being transferred into his cheeks from the tip of his nose as if the sun were kissing him.

The sweet scent of what smelled like a mix of fried noodles, octopus balls, cotton candy, ice cones and god knows what else.

The way her hair shone in the pale, aqua moonlight like a gorgeous emerald shimmering under the waves of the ocean.

The way her eyes looked like they were sucking his very soul in as they flickered on and off with a mixture of irritation, disbelief and amazement.

The way she looked pretty.

The way she looked beautiful.

In a single microsecond, Nagisa was very sure that the heat he could feel in his cheeks wasn't coming from nose-to-nose contact anymore. "I-I got it! Just let me go, Kayano! You're causing a scene!" He cried out, his hand reaching up to grab Kayano by the wrist and his other hand placing itself onto her shoulder in preparation to push here away.

Nagisa was right. Everyone else within a radius of them who had already been attracted by the stint that was the bouncing ball was staring at them intently. The voice of a little boy resounded from somewhere in the back of the group of people, "Mommy! I thought you told me people being all lovey-dovey with each other shouldn't do it in public!"

Hearing this statement finally seemed to make Kayano realize what she doing and quickly regained her composure, letting Nagisa go and shoving him backwards gently to create distance between them. "…sorry." Kayano said, her voice small and clearly dyed with embarrassment.

Hearing that was of no comfort to Nagisa. In fact, hearing her voice all shy and withdrawn was enough to make his face turn as bright red as the sky was dark blue. He quickly hid his expression by turning around to face away. "I-it's okay. As long as you understand it, that's fine…"

He resisted the urge to violently punch the now smug-looking man trying desperately not to laugh out loud who was standing behind the counter of the stall and decided to just wing it. He had absolutely no clue how to replicate his earlier feat, and he had no idea how to begin going about it. He cocked his wrist and tossed it, only realizing his mistake of putting too much power into his throw belatedly and mentally cursed himself for it.

It bounced off of the wall and then straight back at Nagisa, such was the power of the throw, and he blinked once before reflexively yanking his head backwards; his body had tried to maneuver him out of the way, but it hadn't done so intelligently and instead kept his forehead in the line of fire.

Rather, it got him right between the eyes. _Crap!_ The impact forced Nagisa's eyes to close out of instinct, and he reached up to his head and pressed his fingers against the point of impact where the ball had rebounded from his skin. With his eyes closed, Nagisa was suddenly confused when he heard the "oohs" and "wows" of amazement from around him followed by a cry of disbelief from Kayano as well as a whistle from the guy at the stand.

Opening his eyes, Nagisa couldn't see anything. The ball was gone. "Wait, what just happened?"

"You sank it in the same bottle as the first one." The man said to him in reply, grinning. "Keep this up and you won't even need my help."

 _How is that even possible?!_ Nagisa, dumbfounded, just stared at the bottle like it was alive and trying to buy underwear from Uniglow. _That's just pure dumb luck!_ Nagisa, feeling the last of his will to resist give way, just let his arm slack as he calmly, casually and almost weakly threw the last ball into the entire range of bottles.

What proceeded to happen boggled Nagisa's mind.

A clean shot into the centermost bottle. It bounced off of nothing and simply landed dead center, making almost no noise. And for a while, there was none. Everyone who was present was simply staring at the spectacle in shock and awe, and silence was king for a few moments. He was then promptly overthrown in the next five seconds as a wave of cheers and applause rang across what sounded like the entire festival like it was New Year's Eve.

"Good job, Nagisa." The blue-haired boy turned at a familiar voice to see Chiba Ryuunosuke clapping in the midst of the crowd. "That was very well done." He said with what sounded like genuine pride and respect in his tone. Behind the black-haired boy whose bangs constantly kept his eyes hidden was Rinka Hayami, who was also clapping with a very stoic expression that was betrayed only by a slight smile.

 _Wait, don't tell me everyone was watching?!_ Nagisa, feeling more embarrassed than ever, simply felt his face go hot and he ended up looking down at the ground, unable to meet anyone's gaze.

"Hey, hotshot!" The man who was occupying the stall suddenly called out with a loud voice to Nagisa, and the crowd slowly died down. Nagisa raised his head to meet eyes with the man, and he simply pointed at the gigantic Pocky box. "Are you just gonna leave it there, or are you gonna give it to someone who really wants it?"

Nagisa could feel his ears burning red, but he walked to the counter albeit somewhat hesitantly. The man just grinned and handed him the ginormous box, plopping it down onto the counter. Nagisa braced himself and hugged the box, letting out a grunt and managing to heft the box a bit before glancing at Kayano.

"Here." Nagisa said, placing the box down again in front of her. He patted the top of the box and grinned. "Since you wanted it, I figured…you know." He said, scratching his cheek out of embarrassment and averting his eyes.

"Whoa, for real?! All for me?! You serious?!" Kayano was totally and completely overjoyed, practically leaping into the air like the ending credits were about to roll, as she hugged the Pocky like she would a normal human being. "Thanks so much, Nagisa!"

 _What is this…feeling inside?_ Hearing those words made Nagisa feel a bit warm inside, meriting a very open smile on his face that felt just as warm as his heart did. "…no problem, Kayano."

"Whoowee~! You guys should get together already!" The man teased again, grinning like a fool.

"I appreciate that you gave us the Pocky, but please shut up already!"

* * *

"These taste so good!" Kayano said to herself as she drilled through the last remnants of her seventh Pocky stick. She was sitting on a bench situated a fair distance from the festival stands and the people inside of them as well as the passerby that were enjoying themselves with the festivities. The hubbub and the noise were now distant enough from her that she could enjoy eating her Pocky in relative silence. And eat them she did; the box held an abominable amount of small packs of Pocky that, from a glance, that looked like it could feed a whole family in a third-world country for a week.

Kayano, after crumpling up the small package that she had been eating out of, just tossed the piece of trash into the giant Pocky box and then drew out another one. She peeled the top off the container easily and then drew another stick of the Pocky out, easily devouring it. The green-haired girl immediately let out a groan of delight as the sweet flavor spread through her mouth and pleasured her taste buds.

"Oh, it's you." A gruff male voice drew Kayano's attention, and she turned in the direction of the noise to see the man that had been running the stand earlier. "Enjoying your gift, little girl?" The tall man grinned in a very non-threatening manner that was very contrary to his appearance as he walked over to Kayano.

"Yeah! Thanks again!" Kayano said, grinning in reply before sticking another Pocky stick into her mouth and breaking it into two pieces before beginning to chew it. "I really love it! I can't believe Pocky boxes of this size even exist!"

"Glad to hear it." The man said, nodding in satisfaction. "To tell you the truth, those aren't real Pocky sticks, though." Kayano's confused expression made the man chuckle before he continued. "Actually, those are all homemade. I made the box myself, too."

"Whoa, are you for real?!" Kayano exclaimed, impressed as she turned back around to stare at the box of Pocky with a completely different appreciation for the contents. "I couldn't tell at all!"

The man just laughed as he took a seat on the bench a fair distance from Kayano, which was a bit of a difficult feat considering the man's size reminded of a gorilla. "My name's Al. I didn't introduce myself earlier because I figured you guys were just gonna pass by and leave without accomplishing, but you ended up winning." He said to Kayano, hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees to support his bulky frame.

"Al, huh? Sounds like a foreigner's name." Kayano replied casually, one Pocky stick dangling out of her mouth as she spoke to him seemingly undeterred by the grown man's impressive stature and bulk. It looked a bit like a stick of tobacco to Al, amusingly enough.

"Well, my dad was Italian." Al replied, glancing back at the street where a large flock of kids were laughing and running around while ignoring their older sisters and brothers yelling for them to settle down. He smiled at the sight, the level of noise that the kids not being enough to bother him. "I grew up here, though I don't look it." Al suddenly realized the absence of the other person who should be present and he turned back to look at Kayano. "Hey, where's that other kid?"

"Oh, Nagisa?" Kayano replied, glancing in the direction that Nagisa had walked off in. "He went to use the bathroom." She then giggled and took the Pocky stick that was dangling from her lips out of her mouth. "I bet he used the bushes or something."

"How do you two know each other?" Al asked, curious.

"Us? We're classmates." Kayano said, smiling. "We're also really good friends, since we sit next to each other."

"Huh." Al just nodded in acknowledgement. "Well, he didn't look like he objected that much to being called your boyfriend."

That statement totally caught Kayano off-guard, and she looked back at him with a confused face. After a few seconds of silence, the statement registered enough to warrant the beginnings of a blush and Kayano almost stuttered profusely when she began speaking. "W-wait, where did that come from? We're not like that."

Al laughed heartily when he heard that, slapping his knee as he chuckled. He eventually stopped, taking in a breath before he continued but his smile was still very apparent. "It's really hard to believe you when you seem so close."

"I just said that we're not anything like that." Kayano replied, her embarrassment slowly beginning to die down as the time was passing. "We're just really good friends. That's all."

"Well, it's good to see you kids so close, but I don't believe you for a second." The man said, clearly not convinced of anything but willing to let the topic go. He leaned back onto the backrest of the bench, craning his neck in various directions to get it to relax. A few audible cricks were heard as he did this, but Kayano paid that no mind since she was still fixated on the topic at hand. "Remember to thank him, though. He worked pretty hard to get that box for you, you know. And just so you know, I think you two look great together. You even have the height thing going on."

"Hey, wait! I already told you, we're not like that!"

"Oh, there he is. Tell 'im I said hi, kid." Al said, glancing in the direction past Kayano as he got to his feet and chuckled. "Oh, and a serious tip from an old man: summer festivals are a great time for a little romance." He called out to her again from over his shoulder as he left Kayano sitting at the bench with nothing but her box of Pocky to keep her company.

Before Kayano could protest any further, Al walked off and in the direction of the crowd. Despite his large frame, Kayano quickly lost him in the crowd as he turned a corner. After a moment's consideration of going after him, Kayano just let out a frustrated huff and sagged her shoulders. Remembering what Al had said before she left, Kayano glanced in the same direction that Al had looked at earlier before he left and realized that Nagisa was already approaching her.

"Sorry, Kayano. I couldn't really find a bathroom nearby." Nagisa said disappointedly, scratching the back of his head as he drew closer to Kayano. "Thanks for waiting."

"Oh, uh, yeah. Don't worry about it." Kayano replied, shaking her head and patting the box that was resting next to her. "I had my Pocky box to keep me company while I waited."

Nagisa simply laughed at that response and sat down next to Kayano.

 _Dammit, Al._ Kayano thought to herself as she tried her best to make some distance from Nagisa by the millimeters. _He said all those things and now I can't stop thinking about them._ Kayano felt that her cheeks were still red from earlier thanks to Al's teasing, and now she was worried that it was going to show on her face. Afraid that it would be noticed if she went on for too long without saying anything, Kayano decided to make sure the flow of their conversation went somewhere else. "Did you do it in a bush or something?"

Nagisa reddened a bit out of embarrassment but nodded very feebly. "…sorta."

"Are you even serious right now?!" Kayano laughed partially out of pure disbelief, but it was enough to bring a tear to her eye as she bent over and busted a gut.

"S-shut up." Nagisa replied softly, his voice now decreasing in volume proportionally to his embarrassment. "I didn't really have a choice. They said that the closest toilet was probably back at my house."

Kayano just shrugged in agreement and leaned back, propping herself up with her arms. "Well, I guess that's true. It's not like they set up those stalls everywhere. What are those called, again? Those…uh…"

"Porta Potties?" Nagisa offered.

"Yeah, those!" Kayano exclaimed, pointing a finger at Nagisa when he said the answer.

Slowly their conversation slowly began to dwindle into a bunch of nonsense about things that were completely unrelated. Talking about the history of Porta Potties slowly turned into a conversation about favorite characters in movies and books, which then transformed into a conversation about Forrest Gump. And then that conversation turned into a long drawl of complaints about how white clothes stain so easily.

 _All said and done, though, it's true that I want to thank him for getting me this awesome box._ Kayano thought to herself amidst the conversation as she glanced at the massive Pocky box that sat to her side like a companion.

"…hey, Nagisa? Is there anyone you're in love with?"

For a time, the glow of the lights of the festival seemed to dim until they were practically invisible and the noise of people enjoying themselves seemed to die down to a hubbub of unintelligible, indecipherable background noise that was so unimportant and irrelevant that it might as well have been muted entirely. The air seemed to slow down and almost freeze in place as the gravity of her words began to set in on Kayano.

Time flowed again.

 _Wha-wha-wha-what the hell just came out of my mouth?!_ All hope for hiding her embarrassment was thrown to the sharks as Kayano felt her inner being emerge from the depths of her psyche and proceed to beat her brain to death over and over out of sheer embarrassment. _Th-th-the mood felt kinda good and everything was quiet and nice and I thought that-agh, what the hell did I just destroy it for?! What the heck is wrong with me?!_

"Th-th-th-that's not wh-wh-what I meant to say!" Kayano managed to get those words out of her mouth though she blustered and stuttered it in a hot mess to a confused and also embarrassed Nagisa who's own cheeks were beginning to redden out of embarrassment. Kayano quickly held up her arms in the shape of a big **X** and then said, "Wait, let me rephrase my question!"

"O-okay." Nagisa, at a loss for words, simply said that in reply.

 _D-dammit, now I made it awkward._ Kayano thought to herself glumly, feeling her inner self sigh despondently. She glanced at the Pocky box and then sighed to herself, remembering Al's suggestion. "…want some Pocky?"

"Sure." Nagisa replied. Kayano opened the box and then took out a single wrapper that was full of a batch of strawberry Pocky sticks. Kayano raised her head and, just when she was about to turn towards Nagisa, she noticed something.

There was another pair that standing a bit away from the bench that Kayano and Nagisa were sitting at. Both of them were young women, and they both were wearing _yukata_ ; one was entirely pink with flowery print all over it and the other was purple with cute yellow ducks printed all over it. They both appeared to Kayano as college-age girls, and they were gorgeous almost beyond belief; one had shoulder length blonde hair that draped down like shimmering, yellow silk and the other had short, dazzling mahogany brown hair.

The two of them both stared into each other's eyes, clearly lost in their own world of sparkles and lilies, as they neared one another. And, as Kayano could see with her candy-lover's eye, there was a single object that they both held in their mouths.

The very sight of it drove Kayano's heartbeat up to twice what it already was, and she quickly tore her eyes away so that her blush wouldn't intensify. They darted back to Nagisa, who was none the wiser and hadn't noticed anything different about Kayano at all. He simply tilted his head a bit in confusion when Kayano hesitated, but she said nothing and quickly if not somewhat hastily tore open the package of Pocky nestled in her palm.

… _wow._ She thought to herself as she stole another glance at the pair of young women that were enjoying their flirty game. At that moment, an idea of inconceivably embarrassing proportions came to her mind like lightning striking a lightning rod that had been thrown into a storm by means of a catapult. The idea was just so embarrassing and unlike anything Kayano's ever thought of that she was already mentally staggering at the sheer proportion of the boldness of her idea. Just the mental image of it threatened to grab her heart and stop it instantly by means of asphyxiation.

As if her mind had no say in the matter and her will was nonexistent, Kayano's mouth moved on its own in tandem with her idea. "…Nagisa, I have an idea. Close your eyes."

Nagisa, unsure of what to say of this, opened his mouth to ask, "What? Why?" but Kayano simply shushed him by holding her finger up to her lips and winking. Without any further complaints, though he hesitated, Nagisa closed his eyes as per Kayano's direction.

"Okay. Now say 'ah'" is what Nagisa heard.

 _Oh, I get it._ Nagisa thought to himself as he parted his lips and exposed his inner cheeks and tongue to the cold air. _She's gonna feed me like this, I guess? I wonder-_

His thought process stopped when he felt the Pocky stick intrude his mouth, and he couldn't help but feel a bit awkward at the feeling of being penetrated by a small little breadstick coated in delicious flavoring. As Nagisa took a bite of it, he felt the broken end of the Pocky stick being offered to him again. Nagisa quickly chewed the small end that he'd already managed to bite off and then bit off another piece.

"Alright, I'm gonna give you another one." Kayano said, and Nagisa could hear the plastic making noise as she pulled out another stick. He felt the end of the Pocky being pressed in between his lips, and he opened his mouth slightly to let it enter. It did so without incident and Nagisa bit off another portion of it and felt the flavor of the Pocky stick permeate the inner regions of his mouth.

 _Is…is she gonna keep doing this for a while?_ Nagisa wondered to himself, feeling a bit embarrassed as he continued to chew on the small bit of Pocky in his mouth.

He felt another poke at his mouth, and he opened his mouth to accept the Pocky stick. It entered his mouth and Nagisa was just about to bite down onto it when another sensation suddenly made his brain freeze in place and melt into a puddle of hot goo at the same time.

A sensation like two warm pillows were pressing into his lips.

The taste of strawberry that was once overwhelming his taste buds mere seconds ago receding into the background as if he couldn't even taste it anymore.

A tingle traveling down his spine in an instant like a lightning bolt, and a shiver that forced goosebumps all over his arms.

Having closed his eyes, Nagisa's senses of smell, taste and touch had already been amplified to a level above his normal. The assault on his senses after having shut his eyelids was bringing into his mind a strange, hot feeling that stopped his heart in shock and then caused it to overclock at more than four times the normal speed.

Nagisa tore open his eyes to see Kayano's face at point-blank distance from his, her eyes closed as well and their lips interlocked. Immediately, Nagisa could feel his cheeks rise to a temperature that could boil water if someone cared to splash it on him.

They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity but what Nagisa could tell was four seconds. Kayano then drew away and opened her eyes, a blush as red as a rose tinting her cheeks. Nagisa wanted to say something, anything, to her but his tongue was just as confused as his mind.

"…I-I'll see you at school!" Kayano blurted out suddenly, unable to take it anymore. She quickly got up from the bench, grabbed the Pocky box, hefted it onto her back and then dashed off as quickly as a single mom with five kids and a salary worker for a husband at a grocery store sale for 50% off on toilet paper.

Nagisa was left dumbfounded and blushing. He reached up to his lips and ran a finger over them, unable to truly process what had just happened. The presence of his lips had become over-pronounced, like they had been swapped out with a new pair and he'd never felt them before.

… _tastes sweet. Kinda like...strawberries._


End file.
